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Normally there are two ways most REO agents handle their utility bills but wait, there is a third:

1. Pay each bill with a check and set the check aside for several weeks until it is due to minimize the leverage of funds

2. Pay by bill-pay through your banking website which only takes daunting hours of your time due to hundreds of accounts that are no longer used or require deletion

3. Use Realty Pilot's Concourse 360 to create the record of the check file and print one check for each utility company at the end of the month

Let's face it banks don't pay a management fee for properties as an REO and the longer the hold time of a property the more free labor the banks are squeezing out of you. One of the most important things to know is where your break even number with days to hold a property is. Is it based on the number of tasks that are involved, is it due to the price of the home or is it the amount of time the home stays in your inventory? All of these are concerns but the one most important is hold time. The longer the hold time the more chance the REO asset will cost you money rather than make you money. So what do you do? First, pin point what costs you money then find a way to minimize those costs. Since this blog is about utilities I am going to let you in on a little secret.

Utilities will cost you money by the amount of time spent paying the bill-pay through your bank and takes money out of your pocket immediately. They will also cost you money printing numerous amounts of checks every month only to release them strategically hoping not to miss one and you still have to scan a copy of that check for the invoice record. Additionally there could be deposits and bonds involved to support the volume of bills under your own name. So what do you do?

Realty Pilot's Concourse 360 has come up with a very unique check writing system that allows you create the check file within their system right from the expense record that looks just like your check without printing and scanning. This check file stays with the expense that is tracked for each property. This allows the agent to pay all bills for a utility company on one check at the end of the month. So now you only have to print one check for each utility company and your money is not immediately dispersed allowing you to reduce the amount of time your funds are leveraged for the bank or asset company.

Have you given it a second thought as to how secure your email is?  With our dependence to the digital world email hacking has been more prevalent.

What can we do to save our sensitive information?  How can we prevent someone from hacking our emails?  Is it a big deal to take precautions?

Here are a few tips:

• Use elaborate passwords including letters and numbers
• Back up emails in secondary accounts
• Use only secure internet networks to check your emails

Care to share?  How do you protect you email? 

Time Really Is Money

Internet savvy real estate buyers are skipping the old "find a Realtor, and then find a home" process of the past. Instead, 89% start their search online and then through their individual research they find a realtor. That brings up a great question. How soon do you respond to a web based request for information?

Jeanne M. Gavish posted a great blog on this subject entitled, "How Much Time Do We Have to Respond to Online Leads?" I would highly recommend Jeanne's post as a reminder that we live in a new age of tech-first buyers who won't wait for a realtor to get back to them later that day or the next day. Time is lost money if isn't used correctly.

The Metropolitan Regional Information Systems, our MLS, posted their own article on this subject. It's obviously becoming a pet peeve with home buyers. Agents who don't return calls quickly, respond to emails immediately or answer text messages are hurting their own success in this age of smartphones, computers and wirelsss everything. The MRIS article, "Tips for shortening response time and converting more leads" offers techiques you can use to capture those priceless leads. Today, time really is money.