Western Real Estate News

Colorado Springs, CO. – Nicole Lee with the Ashford Real Estate Group, a leading Colorado Springs property management company, says the recession has significantly lessened the margin of error for real estate investors who are feeling squeezed by the economy and can no longer afford inefficient cost controls and inexperienced management of tenants and vacancies.

She says that property managers who don’t sufficiently screen tenants for ability to pay the rent and likelihood of paying it on time, and who don’t take proactive steps to reduce or eliminate vacancies, can end up permanently destroying their clients’ real estate assets. In some cases, they may risk putting their clients’ properties into foreclosure.

In one recent case, Lee says that a builder with nine income properties faced catastrophic loss of all assets in foreclosure proceedings because six of the nine tenants stopped paying the rent. According to Lee, this is happening more frequently to inexperienced property managers as the job market continues to underperform, and more renters start getting behind on their rent. She says that her clients haven’t suffered that fate because of her quick-response strategy for late payments.

“We protect our clients going into the lease agreement, first of all, by being extremely picky about the tenants we allow into the property. There are plenty of good tenants out there if you know where to look, and we definitely know where to look.”

She says that once the lease is signed with a reliable tenant, it’s still more important than ever to be diligent in managing every aspect of a property’s investment potential. If and when a late payment occurs, her property management company has quick reflex policies to deal with it and keep a small problem from becoming a large one.

“Many Colorado Springs real estate managers don’t realize the dramatic impact they have on the bottom lines of their clients’ balance sheets each year. We take our clients’ assets very seriously, because we want our property owners to stay with us for decades.”

Lee says that too many homes are going back to the bank these days, but that foreclosures should present opportunities for investors, not problems.

“By being proactive in our real estate management services, we’re generally able to keep our Colorado Springs rentals consistently in a state of positive cash flow. That’s why our clients stick with us through all types of markets – they know we’re out to fiercely protect their investment.”

About Ashford Real Estate Group

Nicole Lee of Ashford Real Estate Group is a part of the Masters Group and provides a variety of real estate services to Colorado Springs and surrounding military installations such as the Air Force Academy, Fort Carson, Peterson Air Force Base, Shriever Air Force Base, and Cheyenne Mountain Air Station.

Nicole Lee’s passion is finding the right place to live for military personnel and other residents looking for Colorado Springs homes for sale or rent, and managing investment properties efficiently for local and out of town investors. She also specializes in helping renters learn how to become first time homebuyers and enjoy the benefits of home ownership.

Nicole Lee can be contacted at:

Ashford Real Estate Group
4760 Flintridge Dr, Ste 100
Colorado Springs, CO 80918
Phone: (719) 314-6057
Fax: (888) 631-0062

http://www.coloradospringshomesource.com/
http://www.coloradospringspropertymanagement.net/
http://www.coloradospringsrentals.org/

Hear Nicole Lee discuss real estate management:
http://www.coloradospringspropertymanagement.net/files/nicole-lee-property-management.mp3

Selling your home is the easiest alternative for those needing or wanting to move into a new home, but it’s not always the best option for your long term financial health. Whether you’re relocating due to a job transfer, PCSing to another military installation, or want to upgrade your home or downsize to an empty nest, using professional property management can help you keep your existing home rather than sell it, so you can start building a substantial retirement nest egg. Would be sellers in the area are increasingly turning their unsold home into Colorado Springs rentals.

While not everyone can afford this option, you would be surprised at how average-income families can be resourceful and find a way to buy another home while holding onto their previous one as an investment. The best thing to do is talk to a Colorado Springs property management company to help devise a strategy for your particular home. The ability to keep a positive cash flow by keeping your Colorado Springs home rented out to good renters and keeping maintenance expenses at a minimum will depend on how good your property manager is. (By far the best in the area is The Ashford Real Estate Group, 719-314-6057.)

Many novice real estate investors may be surprised to learn that short sale investments are not guaranteed to be profitable. Of course, no investment is guaranteed. But many presume that buying a property at a steep discount below the current mortgages held on the property is a sure-fire way to get rich. It’s not.

Why isn’t short sale investing always profitable, whether it’s in Florida short sales, California short sales, or Colorado short sales? Because the reason the property is a short sale in the first place is that its value was over-inflated by the lenders in order to lend more money against it. Just because you are buying it cheaper than it was valued previously doesn’t mean it can’t be valued even less in the future.

All this is not to scare you away from purchasing short sales as investment property. It is only to underscore the need to get an experienced short sale negotiator on your side when making an offer on a short sale property. It’s important to find someone local. If you’re looking for a Denver short sale, find a Denver agent who is a short sale expert. Without such experts working for you, you are likely to fall victim to delays, price hikes (that’s why it’s called a negotiation), and bureaucratic frustration from bankers who don’t want to be the business of selling real estate.

There are tips and tricks that only the experienced real estate agent, who has negotiated many favorable short sale purchases successfully, knows. A short sale specialist will keep you from offering too high. A successful investor knows that most of the profit comes on the offer not the sale of the property. Don’t put off your profits until the sale.

Make an offer that makes your investment strategy work, don’t rearrange your investment strategy around the specifics of the deal. If the deal doesn’t match your criteria, or the bank doesn’t want to play ball, walk away. There are many others short sale properties to choose from. The right bank with the right owner in the right situation will make the deal you need to earn a respectable profit off of your investment, whether your strategy is flipping short sales or holding short sales long-term as rental property.

It’s important to fully understand the power of sale clause if your state allows non-judicial foreclosures, whether you are a home owner facing foreclosure or a real estate investor seeking to invest in foreclosures. Understanding the system and how it applies to you is key to making the best of a bad situation.

The foreclosure laws varies from state to state, and the home owner or prospective foreclosure investor must perform some due diligence to get the most leverage in negotiating favorable terms. CO foreclosures, for instance, can be either judicial foreclosures or non-judicial foreclosures. This means that the process can be initiated in a courtroom or by the lender directly as a result of what’s called a “power of sale clause.”

The power of sale clause gives a private lender the authority to sell a Colorado foreclosure if that clause exists in the original contract, because it pre-authorizes such a sale when the terms of the loan are breached. A judicial foreclosure, of course, is necessary when no such clause exists in the terms of the loan, and the lender needs to bring the borrower to court to initiate Denver foreclosure proceedings.

In the case of non-judicial proceedings, the system in Colorado requires attorneys for the lender to file documents with the Office of the Public Trustee, a governor-appointed officer local to each county in the state. At that point, the Public Trustee must file a Notice of Election and Demand, which must be published for five weeks in a local newspaper.

The borrower in each state has specific rights that are outlined in state law, and give an amount of time to “cure” the bad debt. In Colorado, the owner can file an “Intent to Cure” document that will stop proceedings within 15 days of a foreclosure sale. The borrower does have up to 75 days after the sale to redeem the property for the price of the sale plus interest. Each case is unique, and borrowers and investors alike should seek legal and professional consultation to ensure their interests are represented fully.