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The US private equity company Blackstone has predicted a slowdown in multibillion dollar 'mega-deals' because of the current credit crunch, but insisted that economic fundamentals are strong as it unveiled a surge in profits to $774m

The private equity company Blackstone has predicted a slowdown in multibillion dollar "mega-deals" as America's credit crunch reverberates throughout the global financial markets.

In its first financial results since its flotation in June, Blackstone more than tripled its quarterly profits from $224m to $774m (£383m). Its shares jumped 6.5% to $26.92 by mid-morning Monday.

Blackstone, which has been a driving force behind these leveraged corporate takeovers, said it believed that the economic fundamentals remain strong, but that new deals are hard to establish in the present volatile climate. Hamilton James, the firm's chief operating officer, said: "I think there will be fewer mega-deals until the debt markets come back a bit."

Blackstone's European businesses include United Biscuits, Orangina, Madame Tussauds and the Café Rouge chain. In America, it recently pulled off a record $39bn deal to buy the commercial landlord Equity Office Properties.

The company, which has come under attack over its low tax rates and lavish payouts to senior staff, said cyclical swings were crucial to its success as it follows the basic principle of buying at cheap points and liquidating its assets at the market peak.

"The portfolio is in great shape operationally except for some company-specific issues," said Mr James on a conference call in New York. "We see no signs of a general slowdown in economies, particularly in the US economy."

However he added that set-up fees for deals would be "softer" and that the sale of assets could be delayed by the stock market's recent wobble: "Setting up new deals in this environment is clearly harder." Blackstone was the first of America's private equity powerhouses to sell shares on the public markets - and its prospectus created a furore as it revealed the extent of the returns reaped by the company's founders.

The company's chief executive, Stephen Schwarzman, received $449m on flotation and retains a stake in the business worth $7bn. He threw a $3m star-studded 60th birthday party in New York last year and is said to enjoy eating stone crabs costing approximately $400 each.

Democrats in Congress have objected to the low rate of tax paid by private equity entrepreneurs, although President George Bush has opposed legislation to increase levies.

Mr James told investors today that he "wouldn't be surprised" if tax rates were raised over the next few years as the political balance changes in Washington. He said the "worst case scenario" was that by 2013, Blackstone's present tax rate of between 15% and 20% rises to a level of between 35% and 40%.

The private equity industry has faced similar political problems over its low tax rates in Britain. Leading figures in the industry were forced to defend the tax they paid before a committee of MPs this year. The MPs subsequently called on the Treasury to look into the tax paid by industry figures and their non-domicile status.

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1. Not setting enough funds aside for marketing which causes the marketing to stop. Understand that marketing is the cornerstone foundation to this business. If you’re not marketing, then your business is dying. The way you find really great deals is having a lot of leads coming in. It’s about processing through a lot of leads. One out of twenty calls that come in will turn into a deal. 19 of them are pure garbage. That means that if you are only looking at two or three properties a month it is going to take you a long time to find a deal. That is why you have to generate a lot of marketing.

You want to have a lot of marketing and keep it going full time. I have quoted this statistic before but I will say it again. It takes 5-7 impressions or times that somebody has seen your marketing before the masses will start to react. Most marketers will stop marketing after they have had 3-4 impressions on their target market. Just when the marketing will start to work most marketers will quit their marketing. The idea is to start your marketing and to never stop it. Then test, tweak, improve it, repeat it over and over again. If you follow that you will have a very successful real estate investing business.

2. Not having the drop dead price in your head before starting to negotiate. You can’t base the selling price on what the seller is asking. You have to know right up front what is the top offer you can make and still make a profit in this deal. You need to have a formula and follow that formula each and every time. I have given that formula out in previous editions but let me give it to you again in case you don’t have it. It is the after repaired value minus the rehab dollars necessary to bring the property up to the level of comparable sales minus your buy sell and hold costs minus the profit that is to be made. If you are wholesaling it remember there is profit for you and your investor buyer. That will give you your maximum profitable offer. That’s the most that you should pay for a house. That’s your drop dead point. Regardless of what the seller is asking that is your drop-dead point. You can not go higher than that. Never ever exceed that number. Then you should be safe in your investing business.

3. The #3 mistake is becoming a motivated buyer. I went through the formula to determine your maximum price but the motivated buyer decides that they need to get a deal and buy a house so they forget their maximum profitable offer and justify why they can pay more for a property. That’s a motivated buyer. What I have found is that a motivated buyer always turns into a motivated seller. Don’t get yourself into that situation. Don’t become a motivated buyer.

4. Not considering cash flow. It is not just about profit and loss but it is about having the cash to be able to sustain you through the entire project in fact throughout your entire life. For instance, you are doing a rehab, the rehab will make X dollars in the end but do you have the dollars it is going to take to get to that point. Let’s say you are getting a hard money loan. You are going to hold that money in escrow. Well that means that you have to have some working capital to be able to get some work done before you can get reimbursed. I have seen investors forget that and then what happens is they run out of cash and then the project stops. When a project stops you are talking about a lot of money being wasted. Never let it stop.

The same thing happens with lease options, the investors don’t think about cash flow. They just think about that positive monthly cash flow. What happens if there is a vacancy? What happens if there is an unexpected repair required? They are under funded and undercapitalized. It means they won’t have enough money to sustain them for the long haul. Or they will look at a deal in the luxury home market and see a large profit margin. It might be a million dollar home with $150,000 in profit. What many investors don’t think about is the monthly mortgage payment that goes along with a million dollar home. You have to have enough cash to hold on to that house and make the monthly payments. The luxury home market has a smaller pool of buyers. It means less chance to be able to sell it. You will make that $150-200,000 if you can stay in the game. Cash flow is critical in this business.

5. The #5 mistake is not having a clear understanding of the customer and the customer’s needs and wants in the property.

• Who is your customer?
• Is it an investor?
• Is it a renter?
• What are they looking for in a property?
• Are they looking for profit?
• Are they looking for amenities?
• Are they looking for price or location

If you are rehabbing the house for an owner occupant you need to understand what they are looking for based on the area that they are in. Otherwise you have done too much or too little rehab which is bad either way because you have either spent too much money in the project or you have made a house that nobody is going to want because there aren’t enough amenities in it.

If you are trying to sell to an investor buyer what are they looking for? Don’t try to sell the house the same way to an investor buyer as you would to an owner occupant. The owner occupant is looking at the lifestyle of the house. The investor buyer is simply looking at the profitability of the property. In looking at the profitability obviously people look at the resale potential of the property. Investors are looking at the profit. Recently I saw somebody advertise a property that was a wholesale deal to investor buyers talking about this beautiful swing in the backyard. What does an investor buyer care about a swing in the backyard? They are not going to sit in that swing and look and contemplate nature. They’re looking at whether there is going to be profit in this deal or not. And that’s what you want to be focusing on. If you are talking about renters then you want to talk about the amount of money that they have to put into a security deposit. How much money they have to have up front and whether they can have pets or not and the schools in the area and anything else that you are offering as an amenity to that piece of property. You must really understand your customer before you get into the deal. Don’t get into the deal and then try to create the customer. The customer is already there. Find the right deal for the customer.

Lou Castillo is a national real estate investing expert and mentor to thousands of successful investors. Lou specializes in creating powerful systems that allow investors to work less and earn more using the power of the internet in the real estate investing business.

 

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A significant number of real estate agents who take the Staging Diva Home Staging Business Training Program do so because they’re tired of selling real estate as their primary source of income with all the inconveniences this entails. They no longer want to be on call 24/7, miss family time on evenings and weekends and feel like they live out of their cars. They want more control over their schedules and to be paid for their time.

If you are one of the over 2 million real estate agents in the United States, there’s a good chance your business is struggling. Agents across the country are feeling the pain of today’s slow real estate market. I hear similar complaints from agents all over - from Florida to California. Their commission checks come so intermittently these days that they’ve taken to staging their clients’ homes for free, hoping to sell their listings faster and for a better price. They think this will lead to more listings. Does anyone else see a problem with that?

First of all, as a real estate agent, your time is money. While you’re donating your time to help your client rearrange their furniture, sort through their junk, choose the perfect paint color for their den and decide whether or not to move the baby’s crib out of the office, do you realize the significant amount of time and money you are wasting? Not to mention the risk of offending your client and losing the listing altogether?

If you list four properties this month and spend an average of four hours staging each of them, you have wasted sixteen hours, or two entire workdays. How many homes can you show in sixteen hours? You could have planned, advertised and attended five open houses in that amount of time. When you’re in the business of selling real estate, your strengths are presumably finding and selling property for your clients and negotiating the best deals for them. If you are personally staging your clients’ homes for free, those negotiation skills are being wasted on domestic disagreements over paint chips and furniture placement.

Many real estate agents approach me, looking for information on the best way to use home staging to boost their business. My standard answer to these agents is actually in the form of a question:

Do you want to be a home stager with a real estate license, or a real estate agent who stages houses?

Your answer will determine what approach you should take.

A significant number of real estate agents who take the Staging Diva Home Staging Business Training Program do so because they’re tired of selling real estate as their primary source of income with all the inconveniences this entails. They no longer want to be on call 24/7, miss family time on evenings and weekends and feel like they live out of their cars. They want more control over their schedules and to be paid for their time.

Real estate agents enrolled in the Staging Diva program are there to learn how to make a very good living staging homes, not how to stage houses for free as real estate agents.

As students of theStaging Diva Training Program, they learn how to be home stagers who also happen to be licensed Realtors, rather than real estate agents who happen to stage their listings. If you are an agent first, your focus needs to be on turning listings, not fluffing pillows and sorting clutter.

If you fall into the category of wanting to be a home stager with a real estate license, there is a great chance you will be given a lot of real estate listings. The majority of my home staging clients are homeowners who are just about to list their properties, and they haven’t signed with a real estate agent yet. Many would happily list with me because of the relationship we’ve built as I staged their home. For a home stager with a license, that’s a great listing opportunity!

So what does all this mean? Basically, if your passion for selling real estate has fizzled out and you’re sick of being on call 24/7, you might want to shuffle your priorities and start thinking of yourself as a home stager with a real estate license. You should focus on promoting your home staging services, which is a very profitable business if approached correctly. Along the way you will also pick up real estate listings and find yourself competing with other Realtors on a whole new level.

A good home stager will earn a tremendous amount of trust from their clients. (It’s amazing how the intimate task of sorting through personal possessions can bring strangers together!) If, at the end of the staging process—which you’ve already been paid for—you also get the listing, isn’t that better then staging your listings for free?

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The following real estate marketing tips may serve as guideposts to real estate agents, brokers and individuals interested in buying or selling property

People, who are interested in acquiring or selling property, can contact either a buyer's agent or a seller's agent respectively. Real estate agents work for real estate brokers and earn a commission on purchase and sales. Generally, a seller's agent earns more than a buyer's agent since the latter is paid a percentage of the purchase price or listed price as commission while the former earns a percentage of the sales price as commission. A good buyer's agent needs to bring down the purchase price of the property while a good seller's agent ensures that the property is sold to the highest bidder. Hence, the difference in remuneration. Regardless of whether one is a broker or a real estate agent, one needs to market the investment property in a manner that is appealing to the buyer. The following real estate marketing tips may be useful to realtors and brokers desirous of clinching a good deal.

Real Estate Marketing Ideas

Effective Communication: The importance of good communication skills cannot be underestimated since the agent or the broker needs to convey his / her beliefs, ideas and thoughts to the customer (buyer or seller) and assess the needs of the prospective buyer or seller and arrive at a mutually acceptable solution.

An agent or a broker who has a number of property listings will be unable to clinch a buyer unless he / she is able to present the property in a manner that appeals to the aesthetic sense of the customer. The unique selling proposition (USP) of the house should be clearly communicated.

Again, a seller's agent needs to be able to convince the customer about the prudence of entrusting the task of selling the property to him / her. This brings us to the mode of communication.

E-Business: Nowadays, E-Business is the preferred mode of conducting transactions. E-Business comprises setting up the website, helping the potential clients navigate through the website and showcasing the available products in a manner that would encourage prospective customers to transact with the real estate agent/broker.

Virtual tours are an excellent way of providing buyers a glimpse of the home. The buyer can have the satisfaction of touring the entire house or property that he/she is interested in with the aid of slide shows and accompanying audio description.

People who are looking to sell their property need to have confidence in the professional who professes to sell the property for a profit. The seller's agent needs to ensure that the website describes, in detail, the professional services that can be expected from the seller's agent. The professional needs to distinguish himself / herself from competitors and communicate with clarity and precision the extent of services that can be expected by the customer. Moreover, the website should not lack visibility. Again, video clips of the homes, that have been sold by the agent / broker, may help drive home the point. The agent/broker may also upload a small video clip of himself / herself to make the presentation seem less impersonal.

Promotion: Permission based e-mail marketing is a highly effective promotion strategy since the product information, or in this case information about real estate, is supplied to people who are looking to buy or sell real estate. Contrary to popular belief, e-mail marketing generates the maximum return on investment as compared to the other modes of direct marketing. Direct Marketing Association, has predicted that the return on investment in case of e-mail marketing for the year 2009 is expected to be $43.52 per dollar spent. Sometimes, local multiple listing services (MLS) may be the best bet as far as promotion is concerned.

The above list of real estate marketing tips is not comprehensive. Ultimately, agents need to find a system that works for them. Designing a good website, permission based e-mail marketing and using MLS may attract potential clients. However, the ability to complete the transaction is contingent to the agent's prowess as a good salesperson.

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