The Right Technology to Enhance Your Real Estate Business

In today’s world, controlling your personal and professional relationship is the key to success. Infact success in real estate business starts with relationships.

However, with the advent of social and professional networking sites such as facebook, twitter, linkedin etc. though staying in touch with more number of people from your network has become easier, the process itself has become complex. This is because of the sheer number of friends or colleagues who are in your network or group. On the other hand, however large network you have, you can’t take risk of ignoring anybody in your network because may be it is one of your former colleague who introduces you to a potential customer who gives you a landmark deal. Or a classmate in your network, working in another organization, may help you secure a key partnership. Therefore you need to stay in touch with your network more effectively to create new opportunities.

In other words, with the increasing importance of social and professional networking sites, you need a tool that can help you maximize the potential of your relationships by helping you build rapport with new people, stay in touch with people in your network, and find the right person for the task at hand.

While looking for an application with these features, I stumbled upon ConnectedHQ. Though, some improvements may be required in this application, overall it seems perfect for real estate professionals. It offers the benefits of:

• real estate contact & prospect management
• social network integration
• e-mail integration with contacts and prospects
• calendar appointments scheduling
• task management
• extensive notes management synced with contacts & easy to enter & search notes

Cost of the application seems reasonable compared to other such applications available in the market. But before using this application, you yourself find out more about ConnectedHQ to see its usability for your specific needs.

Indian Angel Network invests in GrOffr.com: a Real Estate group buying pioneer

Indian Angel Network, India's first and largest business angel investor group, invested in a real estate group buying pioneer, GrOffr.com to help them expand their reach in India. GrOffr.com, co-founded by management school classmates and colleagues at a large financial services firm Sandeep Reddy and Vikhyat Srivastava in 2010, helps customers in getting attractive rates for their planned purchases of Real Estate, Cars and other high value assets. By leveraging the power of group buying, GrOffr allows customers get lucrative deals from builders in the primary real estate market. IAN invested under US$1 million.

IAN member Mr. Krishna Jha, who serves on the board of the company believes that GrOffr is a differentiated business idea in the real estate asset category with large potential for savings for end customers.

Indian Angel Network, operating nationally, with over 170 investors from across the globe, brings together successful Indian entrepreneurs and CEOs who share a passion to enable more early stage businesses to create scale and value. By focusing on startups, the Network addresses the current acute lack of funds available to early stage companies. IAN also seeks to provide mentoring, strategic thought leadership and leverage the Network's network for the investee companies.

IAN investors invest in ventures that have uniquely differentiated propositions, high quality execution teams and large markets. What began as an initiative "for entrepreneurs by entrepreneurs", has now grown into the most complete early stage angel investing network covering range of activities--right from incubation, mentoring and of course investing in differentiated ideas.

Real Estate Education enhances transparency, professionalism & business volume

by S.K.Jha*

Real estate broking profession lacks credibility and is always looked at with suspicion. However, the credibility of this profession can be enhanced through real estate education. A thoroughly planned system of real estate education can not only improve the credibility of property professionals by inculcating numerous changes in the profession but also enhance the business volume of educated and certified professionals. Suitably planned real estate courses, targeted at different functional areas in real estate, can teach property professionals the much better, profitable and convenient way of doing real estate business. Few of the key changes that education system can bring into real estate business and property market are as follows:

Transparency in transaction and business professionalism: Knowledge enhances transparency and professionalism and this is true for real estate market also. Today, several property brokers are active in the market without any structured knowledge of property sales and transaction process and therefore they are forced to provide wrong and partial information to their clients. They are not able to close the deal properly, mostly at the cost of prospective home buyers, because they have not studied how property ownership is verified, acquired, transferred and leased. In the Indian real estate market, there is a sub set of property advisors, who want to upgrade their knowledge and skill but are unable to do so in the absence of a system of real estate education in which they can study as well as run their business.

In this scenario, a proper system of real estate education consisting of a network of real estate institutes offering full time, part time, evening, week end, distance and online real estate courses could have improved the subject knowledge of professionals and in turn would have improved transparency in property transactions and professionalism in the property business, especially property consulting business. A point to be mentioned here is the initiative of EduMark realty education services which offers courses for those looking for real estate jobs as well as for existing property professionals looking for professional development. EduMark is the first and only institute in India that offers full time, part time, week end, evening, distance and online courses.

Customer Service Efficiency: A knowledgeable and informed property advisor can serve his clients effectively and efficiently which in turn increases his demands in the market. Such demands increase his overall volume of business because one satisfied customer can create ten new customers. However, structured knowledge and information come only through structured system of education.

Real estate subject knowledge and business volume: It is an established fact that buyers tend to prefer a knowledgeable advisor (knowledge displayed through his educational qualification) more than that of an advisor who is not well informed and knowledgeable. However, in the absence of real education system, real estate courses and real estate institutes, property brokers can’t display their knowledge because they can’t acquire any suitable real estate qualification and therefore potential home buyers can’t identify the best suited advisor.

Business ethics and business volume: By offering fraudulent advice, one can derive benefits in short term but it is a net loss in long term. This is very true for property brokers also. This is because, as mentioned above, one satisfied customer can create ten new customers but one dis-satisfied customer can dissuade hundreds of potential clients, so the losses are many folds. However, this fact can be explained to these property consultants only if they are inclined towards learning and there is sufficient opportunity for such learning. 

Real estate jobs and cost of recruitment and training: One of the most important impacts of real estate education is on real estate jobs; While real estate courses offer a platform to potential candidates to start their career in real estate by taking up suitable real estate jobs, it reduces the cost that employers make on the training of new employees. Those candidates who have done a real estate course are already trained and ready for real estate jobs and therefore employers do not need to arrange fresh training of the such employees, which saves time and money both.

Overall, a proper system of real estate education enhances not only the transparency in transaction and business professionalism but also the business volume of the market players. Another advantage is the reduction in training and employee orientation cost.
* S.K.Jha is CEO of EduMark Realty Education Services

A Better Approach Towards Training ‘Fresh-Out-Of-College Grads’

It was about 65°F when we walked into the large auditorium at the west end of the college campus. Since it was late autumn, the leaves were turning yellow and the evening was turning dark earlier. You could see the street lights from the top-end of the glass enclosures of the room. It was the start of our winter quarter.

He shuffled slightly first and then picked up his pace as he made his way to the lectern. But it was not the fleece that he wore over his pale yellow shirt that struck me as odd; it was more his shoes, or lack of them. They seem out of place in the nippy air, I thought.

As Dr Lomanoco made his way to the podium, it was clear that he intended to waste little time introducing either himself or the course, to 29 eager computer science graduates. After distributing the course schedule, his office hours (times and days) and grading system, he proceeded to outline the homework for the next week. What, I thought, homework? Even before we were taught anything? What kind of a system is that?

It was the ‘learn on your own’ system, aka ‘figure it out yourself.’

Having finished my undergrad from India, I thought it would be customary for specific topics to be covered in the class by the professor, and then we’d proceed to review the same at home, do a homework piece and finally, prepare for exams. Rinse. Lather. Repeat.

Nope. That was not the case either for us at UMBC at the Master’s or for the undergrads in the Bachelor of Sciences programme.

You were to read and learn on your own. If you had questions, you’d either ask them during the professor’s ‘office hours’ or ask the teaching assistant during their sessions.

The thing that it teaches is the ‘way to learn’ on your own. By searching for it on your own, or researching with your study group. By digging for more information, either online or hitting the books at the library.

So when I joined Cisco after graduating, it was second nature to research practically everything yourself to get things done. Sometimes we’d RTFM. Most times we’d try, fail and learn. I never went to a Perl programming course, neither did I attend an Apache configuration class. We just tried stuff, broke stuff, learnt stuff.

But that’s not what I find with the folks being hired from many good colleges and schools in India. It is mandatory to go through 3-6 months of training. What? I thought they did just that for the last four years. I had five candidates whom we interviewed a year ago and they wanted to know what our start-up’s “training programmes for PHP and Java” were. Code and learn – was my answer. They looked at me with disbelief. One young lady’s parents (who came for the interview to ensure we are a legitimate company) asked us how we could expect fresh graduates to do any work without training them. If we wanted to train graduates, we’d be running a college, was my reply. Wrong answer. She did not join us.

I am hoping there are colleges which are trying to teach students how to learn, where to find stuff to learn and how to research topics. I would love to think this style of learning is limited to engineering programmes. No, that’s not the case. My chartered accountant spends 2-3 hours daily with the intern teaching him some of the most basic things in accounting. He’s a commerce graduate from a very good college.

There has to be a better approach than the hand-holding we do in most undergraduate programmes. Even if we undertake a single class on teaching folks ‘how to learn,’ we’d be doing an enormous service to them. So, this is an appeal to college professors in any college. Please teach your students ‘how to learn.’

So how do people ‘learn to learn?’

1. By example: I believe this is the number 1 way to learn anything. Looking at lots of examples. Sample code. Example blueprints. Creating balance sheets of real companies without looking at their details.

2. By trying: Sharad Sharma calls it ‘being a hobbyist.’ Try stuff. Break stuff. That’s when you learn stuff.

3. By teaching: If you learn something, I would encourage you to share it with your team in a small lunch-and-learn session. It is not for them to learn. It is for you to reinforce your learning.

Now, did you figure out how to learn?

P.S. As you can see from the first paragraph, I was hoping I’d be a best-selling novelist. I’m glad I took up working with technology instead.

Source: VCCircle

Tax saving in a gift pack

Mail Today, On Friday 1 July 2011, 11:05 AM

Do you have some excess cash that you want to invest? Maybe you can think of an indirect method of investing (that is not in your own name), and save some tax on the income. Investing in assets or financial instruments directly in your own name will increase your tax liability and could also push you into a higher tax bracket.

You can take a slightly circuitous route on investments for better mileage. One way of saving on taxes is to gift your children and parents assets and cash for investments.

As per the current laws, any gift received in cash or kind exceeding Rs 50,000 is taxed in the hands of the recipient as "income from other sources". However, this rule does not apply to gifts received from relatives. Additionally, any gift received on the occasion of your marriage, under a will or inheritance is not taxed in your hands.

So who is a relative and what is a gift for the purpose of claiming tax benefits? "Relatives, for the purpose of taxation, include spouse of the individual, siblings, brothers and sisters of the spouse, brothers and sisters of the parents, and any lineal ascendant or descendant of the individual or the spouse," says Vikas Vasal, executive director, KPMG India.

As for gifts, the income-tax (IT) laws say any transfer of money in cash or through a cheque as well as transfer of movable or immovable assets, such as property, shares and securities, jewellry, paintings and sculptures, is considered as a gift. When you transfer a property, you may have to get the transfer registered, which attracts stamp duty and registration charge.

"The Indian tax laws do not contain mandatory provisions to have a gift deed (a registered legal document with appropriate witnesses) in case of transfer by way of gifts. However, it is always preferred to have a gift deed so as to avoid any gift being considered as taxable or being considered as unexplained cash, investments or assets," says Sonu Iyer, partner, tax and regulatory services, Ernst & Young, India.

Though there is no tax on gifts, all gifts in excess of Rs 50,000 (other than those from relatives) and income generated through them get clubbed with the recipient's taxable income. However, income earned by assets gifted to minor children, spouse and son's spouse are included in the income of the donor for taxation.

If you want the money earned to be treated as independent income of your minor children, spouse or son's spouse, you will have to prove that the recipients had used their own acumen for making money from the gifted assets. It might not be easy to satisfy the taxman that the income through the asset you gifted is not a passive investment income and has been earned independently by your spouse or minor children. So the easiest way of saving tax is by gifting money or assets to your major children and parents who don't have any income of their own.

Let's assume that your parents are senior citizens (above 60) and have no income. You can gift them any amount of cash for investing in high- return instruments such as senior citizen's savings scheme.

As senior citizens do not have to pay any tax for annual income up to Rs 2.5 lakh, the interest income does not become taxable unless it exceeds this exemption limit. This means you can invest up to Rs 25 lakh through each of your senior parents without any source of income if the annual interest or return is 10 per cent.

You can invest up to Rs 50 lakh through your senior parents and have a tax-free annual income of Rs 5 lakh. If your parents are above 80, they are entitled to tax- free income up to Rs 5 lakh per year for "very senior citizen" category introduced in the 2011-12 Union Budget. You can invest up to Rs 50 lakh through each of your "very senior citizen" parents in instruments that give 10 per cent annual return and avoid the taxman for interest income up to Rs 10 lakh earned by both of your parents together.

You can save a total of Rs 3 lakh (30 per cent of Rs 10 lakh earned as interest income) in tax each if you are in the highest tax bracket. So you can invest a total of Rs 1 crore through your parents and save up to Rs 6 lakh in taxes on the interest income of Rs 10 lakh. If you gift the money to your major daughter for investment, the interest earned from the amount will be taxable only after it crosses the exemption limit of Rs 1.9 lakh annual income.

The income from money invested through your son above 18 will become taxable when it exceeds Rs 1.8 lakh annually. Even when the interest income brings the recipient into the tax net, you still have the advantage of paying less tax then what you would have paid on investing directly.

If you have both parents above 80 and two major daughters, you can invest up to Rs 1.88 crore and have a tax-free income of up to Rs 18.8 lakh. Even if you don't have major children, you can still save taxes by creating a trust for benefiting your minor children.

Now, when you start planning your taxes for the current financial year, make use of this provision to save big on taxes. Make use of the gifting provisions to optimise taxes while making your family financially secure. As you will be giving money on the basis of mutual trust, be sure that the recipient won't take undue advantage of your trust.

Reproduced From Mail Today. Copyright 2011. All rights reserved.