October 2021

House flipping was all the rage from the early nineties through the mid-2000s. Everything came crashing down when the housing bubble burst in 2008. Some of the very investors who had made tidy sums flipping houses eventually lost everything due to being overextended. Even today, with the hottest real estate market we have seen in a long time, flipping houses is still a risky proposition.

This is not to say that investors cannot make good money at house flipping. They can. Many do. However, one must be willing to take on a serious amount of risk to make it work. When it comes to flipping houses, you can lose just as easily as win. You have to be willing to accept that possibility with every new property you invest in.

Here are the top four reasons house flipping is still risky business:

1. Initial Costs Can Be High

Actium Partners, a Salt Lake City, UT hard money lender, says the biggest risk involved in house flipping relates to initial funding. That risk is why Actium Partners does not fund house flipping projects. In short, investors often have to put a significant amount of money into obtaining and renovating properties. Initial costs can be quite high.

In addition to buying distressed properties, house flippers have to renovate said properties before putting them back in the market. Structural improvements obviously take priority. But property investors still want to look at aesthetic improvements as well. The amount of improvement a home needs could significantly hamper an investor’s cash flow.

2. Real Estate Is Time Sensitive

Another problem house flippers run into is the time-sensitive nature of real estate. Assuming normal supply and demand cycles, existing houses tend to enjoy higher sale prices during the spring and early summer months. The later in the year you go, the less valuable a property is. Why? Because fewer people are looking to buy as the calendar approaches late summer and fall. It is a supply and demand thing.

This suggests that house flippers are working on very tight schedules. They have to get newly acquired properties renovated and listed before demand starts drying up. Some flippers accommodate this by purchasing distressed properties during the fall and winter months in anticipation of having them ready to sell by spring.

3. Real Estate Offers No Guarantees

Still another challenge house flippers face is the reality that real estate offers no guarantees. Again, this is why some hard money lenders will not touch house flipping projects. The unpredictability of residential housing just presents too much risk.

A flipper might buy what appears to be a lucrative property late in the year. He assumes that he will be able to double his investment when he lists the property in spring. But there are no guarantees that the spring market will be strong enough to support his financial goals. If he spends too much on renovations and next year’s market doesn’t heat up as planned, he could earn a lot less profit. He might even have to take a loss.

4. Flipping Is Cash Heavy

Finally, flipping houses is a cash-heavy business. Flippers need to have a serious amount of cash flow in order to fund renovations, pay for marketing, and cover things like property appraisals and home inspections. A lack of steady cash flow can dash a house flipper’s dreams in short order.

Making money by flipping houses is still possible. However, it is also a risky proposition. It takes a lot of nerve, along with quite a bit of knowledge and skill, to make it work.

There’s no way to get around it; marketing a SaaS business is very difficult. This is because the software market is very saturated with subscription-based software solutions who rely on recurring revenue instead of one-time software license purchases. Therefore, it is important that a nascent SaaS company does everything in its power to defend itself against its competitors and gain market share in their SaaS niche.

A proven way to do this is to dive into the world of SEO, which is not as intimidating as it initially seems. Unlike other marketing strategies such as social media marketing, SEO allows you to lay out the foundation of your website to be crawled and assessed by search engines (mainly Google) and does not rely on constantly having to run paid ads or hire an expensive sales team to reach potential customers on LinkedIn. Instead, SEO is a proactive strategy that anticipates what people are looking for online and makes sure that you are at the forefront of that process. With that in mind, here are three SEO SaaS tips you’ll need to follow in order to use this marketing channel to increase your website traffic and increase conversions to either free trials or paid subscribers.

 1. Find the Right Long Tail Keywords

 Keyword research is a critical and necessary part of any SEO effort. However, it is especially important for SaaS companies, as potential users seeking answers to specific topics are often looking for solutions to problems rather than a software solution that can specifically benefit them. To ensure you yourself benefit from this trend, you’ll need to hone in your keyword research and make sure that it includes both long tail information requests and more generalized software related keywords. These software keywords should include comparisons to competitors as well as software integration related keywords.

 2. Create contextual content

 Good content is extremely important to a good SEO strategy, and SaaS companies can do well by highlighting their software services through content. You’ll also need to create content that highlights your potential client’s vulnerabilities or pain points so that they can see the value they can get from your software.  This content that you create as a part of your SEO SaaS strategy should be utilizing long tail keywords that you have discovered so that it will rank properly on Google and other search engines.

If this content is not optimized toward these keywords then it will be very difficult to get it to the right audience in search engines. Your competitors may be doing this more effectively than you are, so be sure to look at their rankings and see what content is performing well for them. You’ll then want to use this competitive analysis to repurpose and create the best and most relevant content for your software niche.

 3. Increase Your Content Rankings with Links

 An essential, but often overlooked part of SEO, is link building. Link building is a very important signal that Google weighs when analyzing the relevance and authority of a website to target keywords. When working on SEO for your SaaS business, you’ll need need to make sure that you are linking to the keyword optimized content that you have created. This means that you’ll either need to reach out to other websites yourself to see if they’ll link to you, or if you are struggling with this, you can outsourced your link building efforts to an SEO agency specializing in SaaS business.

With lease accounting standards changing and getting updated, you might also want to consider an update to your current lease management software. It is an investment, yes. It will require money and time as well as transitional management. However, it must be said that newer software might just be able to help your business run more efficiently. How exactly? Well, let’s look at five potential pros for updating your current lease software.

Compliance with the new accounting standards

Of course, the first obvious benefit of implementing new software is that they are already made to comply with the new accounting standards like IFRS 16, AASB 16, ASC 842. Some changes in the regulations now require updating and alter the way that lease accounting needs to be done. For legacy software users or those that utilize Excel calculators this just isn’t possible.

Adjust to the new lease definitions, follow the impacts of cash flow on leases, cover asset turnover and other metrics as well account for them on the balance sheet. New software will have you covered.

Lease management software will give you more insight

More modern lease software comes equipped with more capable analytical tools. For example, more and more modern software solutions come with versatile AI capabilities. Artificial intelligence is mostly used to automate verification as well as provide insights into the current market situation as well as forecast the future.

With more advanced tools you can get in-depth with your current portfolio and spot weaknesses as well as USPs.

Room for collaboration

A lot of leasing companies have their own network of subsidiaries, brokers, and dealers. More advanced software solutions can build a centralized network and a link between the parent company or the leasing company and the subsidiaries and brokers, dealers respectively. This ensures practical benefit as your salespeople can generate leads and follow up on them. Furthermore, brokers and dealers could be granted access to generate quotes for their own clients, speeding up the leasing process on your end.

More secure data storage

In the age of information and digitization, there’s an increased focus on data security. This is especially crucial to legacy software users or those that employ tools with outdated security. Don’t risk your reputation and integrity with unsafe software.

Move over to new tools that are developed around stricter and more demanding measures for data security. This added security doesn’t obstruct the functionality or accessibility of the software, however. Cloud-based management software for leasing companies is even easier to access than its predecessors.

Better for audit purposes

Any kind of newer software for leasing (for example equipment lease management software) is usually offering more in terms of readiness for an audit than its previous generations. Your state-of-the-art software should be able to track changes that you’ve made over time and have historic logs for specific timeframes.

Tracking numbers for audit manually is especially demanding, difficult, and usually almost impossible. This is why you should upgrade if you already haven’t.

ORM companies create their services differently. Furthermore, some do a better job than others. Therefore, you might have to put in extra effort if you want to get the best one you can rely on. Finding a trustworthy ORM company is easy if you have the right knowledge. You can look for recommendations from Google or ask your co-workers, friends, and family members to refer you. You can compare different companies like podium competitors to get the best one. If you have several potential companies, consider the following factors to choose the best from your list.

Number of Success Cases

Before you hire any reputation management company, you need to confirm that they are good at their job. That means the company you are about to hire should have a record of all the successful cases they have worked on. You will only know if you are working with the best if the company can provide proof of their successful work. Pick a company with a high success rate. It is an indication that they know their work and will help your business to build its reputation.

Great Reputation

You are hiring a company to build your online reputation. That means the company itself should set an example by having a good reputation. It does not make sense to work with a bad reputed company to build your reputation. Therefore, check the company’s reputation online and let it speak on the behalf of the company. A great ORM company has already worked on its reputation before it goes out to help others.

Reasonable Plan

The company needs to have a plan on how it is going to do things. Before you seal the deal, you need to know what the company will be offering and what you will gain in the end. You also need to know how long the contract will take. This way, you can budget for the services or even determine if you can afford them.

Clarity and Uprightness

Honesty and clarification are two important things that a company should provide. The service provider should be open and offer transparency. They should be honest about what they will d for you, how much they will charge you for the services and how long it will take. If you notice that the company is not being transparent, it is advisable to seek the services elsewhere.

Realistic Goals

Building an online reputation is not an easy or quick task. Therefore, if the company promises immediate results and big things, you need to be wary. Unrealistic promises might mean that the company uses shortcuts and bad processes in its work. It might also mean that the company is unqualified. Using such a company can ruin even the reputation you already have. The best way is to get a company with realistic goals and promises.

The Bottom Line

Getting an ORM company is easy if you have the right information. If you have a list of several service providers, consider using the factors mentioned above to select the best. You need to build your reputation. So, get a well-reputed company to help you.