“Why should I invest in Commercial Real Estate?,” someone recently asked me. With the well-publicized drop in residential prices in some areas of the country, it might seem prudent to be avoiding real estate right now. Fortunately, all real estate is local, and San Antonio has actually been showing appreciation in prices, even though sales volume has slowed to merely what it was in 2005. But commercial real estate is a different animal altogether:

First, commercial real estate is strictly property for businesses, i.e., retail centers, office buildings, warehouses, manufacturing sites, apartments, and land.
Second, there is less of it than homes. There are about 14,500 pieces of commercial property in San Antonio versus perhaps 300,000 homes.
Third, commercial real estate is either for the use of a business or for producing an investment return, as opposed to a house you and your family may live in.
So, why invest in this area? Some of the great fortunes in the U.S. have been based on real estate. Be it the King Ranch or Donald Trump, property investment can produce returns far in excess of the rate of inflation. Diversification is fundamental to good financial planning and that means splitting up your investable dollars into different sectors that will not act similarly. Investing in the stock market, where you can see the hour-by-hour and day-by-day gyrations of your portfolio can be stomach wrenching. Real estate trades hands infrequently, so the valuations are less subject to daily events and more governed by yearly trends of supply and demand. Putting a 5% to 15% portion of your investment portfolio in property is a very prudent thing to do. This will help stabilize your overall returns and real estate may often move in the opposite direction of the stock market. For instance, commercial real estate, as measured by the index of equity real estate investment trusts over the past 10 years, returned a total of 12.4% versus the SP-500 returns of just under 10%. Here are the basic ways you make money from investing in commercial real estate:

Income: Commercial investment properties will be leased to tenants, like businesses, and retail stores. These leases produce rental income for the owner which should create positive cash flow after the mortgage and expenses are paid. This may produce an income of 5% to 10% per year of the amount you invested.
Depreciation: Also called cost recovery, this tax write-off shelters some or all of your income from the expense of taxes. You write off the cost of the building and some of the building components, but not the land it sits on.
Equity build up: Because you can use your rental income produced by your tenants to pay your mortgage, then the part of your mortgage that is principal – but not interest expense – reduces the amount of your loan and thus builds up your equity in the property.
Appreciation: The property becomes worth more money 1) as the rent income goes up, 2) as the market puts a higher value on the rents and 3) as the land value goes up. Additionally, the value usually goes up somewhat in proportion to inflation so that property is a good hedge against inflation.
Leverage: When you borrow money to buy the property, you can control the entire property for a small percentage of the purchase price. Then because your mortgage is fixed, the appreciation in the equity portion of your investment is amplified. You can control more property for less money. For example, if you buy a property for $4, with $1 of your own and $3 you borrow, and the property goes up in value to $5, then you sell it, pay back the $3 you borrowed and keep the $2 left over. You have doubled your money when the property value went up only 25%. And the interest expense of the mortgage is tax deductible.
You may notice that these five elements of commercial investment form the acronym IDEAL coined by Certified Commercial Investment Members (CCIM), the experts in commercial real estate, a good way to remember it. This is not to say that commercial property investment is ideal, but it may be ideally suited to help you diversify your investments so that you are piece of mind or lack thereof is not tied to only one type of investment, like stocks, bonds, gold or oil wells. Spreading your investments into a well thought out variety of investments is a very smart thing to do and putting some of your hard earned money into commercial real estate investments can pay off for you. What are the three most important things in real estate?

Location It is crucial because that is the essential element of property-it doesn’t move, in Spanish it is “inmobiliaria”, the immovable.
Timing. A tract of land on north Loop 1604 in 1980 simply was a ranch or ranchette on the famous “death loop,” the two-lane farm-to-market road outside of town. Now, as time has progressed and the path of growth has overtaken it, Loop 1604 is a 6-lane expressway with office buildings, retail centers, and restaurants. But you can also find vacant tracts of land inside Loop 410 that have never been built on, growth has stopped in that area, maybe properties are declining and time has passed them by. Another example: Californians thought 15% per year appreciation was their birthright. Now they have seen that trend reversed. Like most things in life, timing is everything and real estate is no exception.
People. Every property is owned by someone, and after my many years in this business, every property has a story. People who own, buy, sell and use real estate are the real reason it has value or not. People are the true key to value.

Information product creation requires extensive preparation, no matter which niche you work within and you want to make sure that your information product has a successful launch. That probably sounds scary and intimidating but here’s the thing: this is a one time effort and it will pay off in a foundation that is strong enough to get your ideal clients to invest in your high-end programs and services without the perils of a traditional funnel. This article will teach you a few of the things that you need to remember if you’d like to invest in yourself and start on the information product creation path using your unique talents and abilities. Remember that you never have to worry about anyone ripping off your ideas because if you understand how to properly position yourself around your story.

Understand Both Strengths and Weaknesses: It is good to have an impartial view of your own strengths and weaknesses when lay the foundation of selling yourself within the information product creation process. It helps you figure out where you are, what you lack and how to move forward so that you get as much growth as possible. It is more than important, it is urgent if you want to create fast success for yourself to have personal positive reinforcement and deep belief to provide yourself the support you need so that you can get over your own limitations to ensure that your information product is as valuable as it can be.

You also need to know exactly who your competition is so you can study them and use their methods to help you improve your own standings. Down recreate the wheel, but understand the wheel and position yourself going uphill from the competition. Check out which kinds of opportunities you’ve already got and try to figure out how best to use them while taking care to remember your strengths and weaknesses. This is a great way to figure out where you stand against your competition which helps you figure out how best to grow.

Launch on Time: No matter what, even if you haven’t officially announced your “launch date” you should launch the site when you’ve said you would. This will force you to stick to your goal and actually work on it. Thinking that “I’ll launch it when I think it’s ready to launch” will only hinder your efforts. You’ve got a responsibility that you need to live up to with your launch, and you can’t move back on that one. If you get close to your launch date and you are getting hung up on your self limiting beliefs in your information product creation, don’t worry this about getting it out there and not perfection. As long as it is usable you should launch it. Launching on time is the professional thing to do and it is more important than creating a “wow” effect in your site visitors. You can always update/upgrade your website when you have to, so there shouldn’t be any issue with that.

Analyze Your Own Concept: If you want to make your information product creation successful you need to understand how good your concept is: is it really going to work for your chosen audience or would something else be better? You already know about your competition; how does your concept measure up? If you haven’t come up with your own idea and are trying to work with someone else’s concept, do some more work on your own before your launch. People want original ideas because they’ve seen too many other me-too websites already.

Test Your Concept Before You Commit To The Information Product Creation Process: One of the biggest failures people have with information product creation is not testing an idea before putting a lot of effort into producing an information product. PPC to a small 5 page site with a landing page is a great way to test an offer before you even produce it. If people will sign up to get it, you can be sure that you can create an information product that will target eliminating the pain of your target market. The small amount of money will be invaluable in using crowd sourcing to direct the final outline of the information product creation process.

You’ll have lots of hurdles to clear after the launch of your information product and the only way to truly take care of them is to follow the advice in this article to work smarter. Plenty of people work hard, but it is the ones who work smarter who make real money online with the information product creation business model.

There is a reason most of us depend on our friends or ourselves for making important investment decisions. It is hard to find a dependable professional source of investment advice. There is no dearth of places to turn to for investment advice, but the decision to put a portion of your financial future in someone else’s hands should be made very carefully after collecting sufficient information.

What are the different types of financial and investment advisors?

Investment advisor is a professional firm or an individual that advises clients on investment matters. They may manage trust funds, pension funds and personal investments like stocks and mutual funds on their customer’s behalf.
Financial planners offer investment advice and help clients with savings, taxes, insurance, estate planning and retirement.
Brokers buy or sell stocks, mutual funds, bonds on their customer’s behalf.
How do I pick a good investment advisor?
Ask your friends and family if they know a good investment advisor. Also compare price quotes from multiple qualified investment advisors listed on B2B marketplaces and ask them for an appointment.

Interview your financial advisor extensively, judging their professionalism and experience. Let him or her learn about your tax situation, fiscal health and long term goals.

Ask the following questions to narrow your search for an investment advisor.

What experience do you have?
Where are you registered?
What investment services do you extend?
Do you have all the required licenses.
How much money do you manage for other clients?
How have your investments performed in the past one to ten years?
How will you assist me with my investments?
How are you paid?
Do you require a minimum investment?
How are you different from other investment or financial advisors?
Learn how your advisor gains from you
Investment advisors are paid either a percent of the asset value they handle for a customer, a fixed or hourly fee, or a combination of all. They have a fiduciary responsibility to act in your best interest while making investment decisions on your behalf. It is best to at least partially compensate the investment advisor based on his or her performance. In such an arrangement, the investment advisor makes a commission only if he or she meets your investment goals. Be wary of investments that pay a large upfront fee to the investment advisor or lock you into investments that levy a withdrawal penalty.

Check credentials and references

It is important to check references and credentials. For example in the US ask for ‘Form ADV’ for the advisors, which provides you with the advisors background, services offered, mode of payment and strategies used. Form is obtainable from the advisors, the SEC, state security regulator or those advisors managing $25 million or more in client assets. Also inquire about the advisors educational and professional background.

Know how to evaluate your advisors

Once you have hired an investment advisor, remember to evaluate his or her performance at regular interval. It is also important to meet with them regularly to review short and long term goals and to adjust your investment portfolio. Apply the following standards for evaluation.

Review performance: Check regularly how your money is doing in the investments advocated by your advisor. Evaluate portfolio performance with regard to investment goal and risk tolerance for invested assets. Use a proper benchmark or metric matching your investment strategy for various assets. For example if you have invested in stocks, use the market index as the benchmark for comparison.
Cost-benefit ratio: Though your money maybe doing well, it is important to ascertain the ratio of investment return delivered by your advisor to his or her earnings. Are you paying more than you thought for the investment return?
Quality of investment recommendations: Evaluate and test your advisors knowledge of the latest investment approaches, preparedness to stay above the rest in the changing market and insights or suggestions on new investment strategies.
Working relationship: Your investment advisor should regularly communicate and update you about your investments.
Personalized service: advisor should regularly review your investment goals and preferences and tailor the investments accordingly. You should be wary of investment advisors who show too much reliance on software programs to create your portfolio.
Hiring a good investment advisor is important to secure your financial future. Hire someone you can trust and can easily communicate with. If you advisor does not perform as expected, set up a meeting to rectify the situation else find someone who could be more helpful.