Author: Ethan Theo

Abe WalkingBear Sanchez is an International Speaker / Trainer / Consultant on the subject of cash flow / sales enhancement and business knowledge organization and use. Founder and President of www.armg-usa.com, WalkingBear has authored hundreds of business articles, has worked with numerous companies in a wide range of industries since 1982 and has spoken at many venues including the Shakespeare Globe Theater in London.

Categories
Finance & Capital

How Much Deposit Do You Need to Buy a Home?

 

How Much Deposit Do You Need to Buy a Home

Buying a home isn’t a quick or easy task that you can plan and accomplish within a day or week. Having proper financial knowledge about the current mortgage market, as well as your ability to buy the home and pay the mortgage, within the stipulated time, is crucial.

Purchasing a home creates many upfront costs, including deposits on the property and the total closing costs. Typically, with this large amount due before you begin paying the mortgage, many people worry about how they will cope with such a big financial commitment. Moreover, even if you have savings stocked away, it’s still essential you look at all of the costs carefully before getting tied in to something you may not be able to afford later down the line.

Most lenders permit home buyers to place a large deposit in order to protect the loan and offer insurance against default, so if the buyer fails to meet payments and defaultson the loan, then the lender can retain the deposit as partial compensation. Therefore, you’ll find that saving enough money for adeposit is crucial when purchasing any property and the amount will vary among different lenders as they are subject to the lending guidelines and terms of the loan. If you’re considering buying a home, shop aroundfor home loans with lower deposits – you might be surprised at how close you already are to having enough to begin!

How much deposit do you need to buy a home?

In the current mortgage market,prospective homebuyers will have tohave a minimum deposit of 5% of the total property value, with the lender can then loan you 95% of the total property value – should you be granted, that is. For example, if you wish to purchase a $150000 home, you shall be required to have a minimum $7500 and borrow $142,500.

Typically, buying a property with the lowest possible deposit needs some consideration. Whilst it might be less stressful to begin with, it also may involve lengthening the repayment period, which translates into increased accrued payments. There are many reasons why you should consider a higher mortgage deposit including:

  • Better mortgage deals- Having a larger deposit shall create confidence among mortgage lenders about your financial capacity, translating into increased repayment abilities. Therefore, you will enjoy more competitive mortgage pacts attached lower interest rates.
  • Better mortgage chances – Most lenders undertake affordability checks to determine if you shall afford mortgage repayments subject to your income and your expenses. Typically, with the minimum deposit you’re likely to have larger mortgage payments, requiring more income.
  • Cheaper mortgage repayments – Usually, increased loan repayment periods translate into cheaper mortgage payments, but if you want to pay your loan off early, with a larger deposit, this can save you paying more interest than you need to.
  • Less risky – When you own a greater part of your home, you are less at risk of negative equity. Being in negative equity may make switching your mortgage or moving house very difficult.

To determine how much you should save towards your deposit, you should consider two factors;

  • Typical property prices

Getting a genuine price shall help in making calculations on your saving plans and mortgage repayment thereafter. Get info about diverse property value www.homestart.net in Perth and set your saving amount today.

  • Monthly amount affordable towards repayment

Determine the amount you can afford towards mortgage repayments and don’t forget to factor in repairs and maintenance, as you’ll have to cover all this too.

Typically buying a home might be a tricky affair if you lack financial knowledge and are not sure of the mortgage market. Owning your own home may be a dream for you that is closer than you think with Perth home loans available with low deposits, but make sure you can afford your repayments before you take the first step.

Categories
Finance & Capital

Small Business Finance Options

Small Business Finance Options

Deciding how to approach financing needs for your small business is an overwhelming and daunting task, as the financial world can be quite intimidating and confusing.There is a wide range of products available to cater to the needs of small businesses, and funding can be secured for a variety of reasons, in a variety of fashions.Explored in the article are some of the options available for consideration, to better acquaint you with the various types and sources available for funding.Prominent lenders and banks are happy to offer clients many resources for funding their professional endeavours including:

Business Term Loans

Business loans are available for all general business purposes other than residential property, where you may be best off looking at fixed rate home loans from NPBS. The borrower is required to provide security for these loans. Loans offer flexible repayment options with amortisation up to 20 years. Interest rates can vary greatly and are determined by calculating the current interest rate plus a margin for the risk factor.

Business Overdrafts

A business overdraft is essentially a line of credit attached to the business account. They offer many advantages, including limited administrative charges, variable interest rates, access to internet banking conveniences, flexible borrowing opportunities with no fixed repayment schedule and interest payable on credit balances.

Leasing and Equipment Finance

Because of the way assets and equipment are financed they can have a significant impacton a business’s bottom line. This avenue of financing includes funding for items and expenses like commercial vehicles, medical and dental equipment, engineering equipment, computer systems and specialised equipment to a name a few. Financing packages are tailored to address each business’s individual needs.

Residentially Secured Business Loan

These loans offer fantastic rates for any business purpose, and there are many benefits including flexible repayment terms, amortisation up to 30 years, no valuation fee, no administration fees after the loan is secured, and no society legal costs, making this a desirable financing option. These loans are available to for business owners who intend to use a residential property to provide security for the loan.

Financial Institution Guarantee

This is a formal obligation to another person or business. The purpose of a financial institution guarantee is to eliminate the need for cash to provide a bond or deposit; the lender instead vouches for you. A financial institution guarantee is a great tool for any business and is useful in a number of scenarios and requires security by either a property or fixed term cash deposit.

Is a Business Credit Card the Answer?

If you are just seeking more available resources for your business, perhaps a Business+ credit card is the solution you are looking for.

Securing a credit card for your business can be a simple and easy way to manage and track company expenses, as well as providing a cash resource when necessary.

Using the credit card can provide many benefits including fraud and theft protection on lost or stolen cards, multiple cards per account, both cardholder and account level statements, the ability to balance transfer, cash advance and transfer funds all at a competitively low rate. Businesses can also enjoy up to 44 days grace before accruing any interest charges.

This provides a lot of versatility and convenience for a business of any size.

Whatever your borrowing needs may be, it is important to understand your options, and carefully select the lending product ideally suited to your business and its financial needs. Let the professionals at reputable lending institutions advise and guide you to making the best decision for your company or for your personal goals.

Categories
How-To Guides

How To Get More Website Visitors To Your Green Website

How To Get More Website Visitors To Your Green Website

After you’ve set up your green website and written blog posts for a month, you may be surprised to find that the world is not beating a cyber path to your door.

You might be tempted to think it is something that you’re doing wrong.

Perhaps your recent posts on changing the world one ecological step at a time were a little too casual in its style; or perhaps, the problem was just the opposite, a bit too scholarly.

However, before you accuse yourself of being either irrelevant or pedantic, there is something that you need to understand: the idea that if “you build it, they will come” is a romantic myth perpetuated by the Field of Dreams movie.

If people are not showing up, enthusiastically commenting on your blog, subscribing to your newsletter, or buying your eco-friendly products to improve the world, it’s not personal. You just haven’t done enough to catch their attention and stir their interest.

So, after you’ve developed your business model around your green business idea or permaculture design and fine-tuned it, the next order of business is getting the word out.

Get the Ball Rolling with Social Media

You will get fast results by using popular social media channels like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Youtube, and Google+, you will find your tribe.

Unfortunately, however, marketing is not as simple as merely connecting with other people on social media. There is a lot more to it.

What is Marketing?

Marketing is a process to tell people about your goods or services. I basically coordinate four things:

  1. It describes your product or service.
  2. It determines your prices based on the value you offer,
  3. It finds ways to deliver your product or service to the consumer.
  4. It continually informs a select group of people (your target audience) that you’re in a business that can help them.

After people show an interest in your product or service, then you can begin selling them. Sales, however, is not always about money; it can be simply persuading people to do something, like signing up for your newsletter or volunteering to help out a cause.

However, marketing, too, is not enough to develop your business; you also have to focus on branding.

Branding is not Marketing

There is a lot of confusion about the difference between marketing and branding. Marketing is more about push while branding is more about pull. Marketing is about doing. Branding is about being. Perhaps, this is a bit of an oversimplification, but you get the idea.

In an excellent article on the difference between marketing and branding, James Heaton on the Tronvig Group blog offers the following distinction:

“Branding should both precede and underlie any marketing effort. Branding is not push, but pull. Branding is the expression of the essential truth or value of an organization, product, or service. It is communication of characteristics, values, and attributes that clarify what this particular brand is and is not.”

While people often associate branding with things like logos, colors, names, spokespeople, mascots, and so on, these are symbolic of something deeper—a company’s values. Hence, branding is more about ways of being rather than doing. For instance, a good brand projects you and your company consistently and authentically. It is also niche-focused and people can relate to its values.

4 Promotional Tips

Here are four ideas to help you get more visitors to your eco-website:

  1. When it comes to social media, your main order of business is to sign up at the top social media websites and find a way to offer value there. On YouTube, for example, you could have a series of video tutorials explaining how people can go green in simple, practical ways. On Facebook, you may want to engage people through a Facebook business and personal page.
  2. You could improve your website in the following ways: optimize it for search engines, make sure it loads fast, and make sure that it is easy to navigate and read.
  3. Once, you’ve got your website set up, you need to figure out ways to engage with other people. Some ways to do this include blogging, creating an email newsletter and participating in link exchanges.
  4. You could try advertising both online and offline to engage people. Online advertising might be buying banner ads, Facebook ads, or Google Pay per click ads. Offline advertising might include classified ads in the newspaper, using custom brochure display holders on the counter at a local flower shop with tips on going green, or posting small flyers on public display boards, like those found in supermarkets.

Frankly, the only difference between you and the success you desire for your business is not taking the necessary steps to get the word out there. You have to tell people about your business!

Categories
Business Trends

5 Unusual Industries Worth Billions

5 Unusual Industries Worth Billions

Many successful entrepreneurs found their success though a somewhat unusual product or industry. Just take a look through any of the success stories from the TV show Shark Tank. The list consists of all sorts of strange products from cleaning sponges in the shape of a smiley face to bed bug traps. The products may be strange, but they’re obviously fulfilling a need in the market. It’s that kind of need that all entrepreneurs are trying to fulfill. That’s the key to bringing in consistent revenue.

Strange products aren’t just a niche market. There are entire industries doing billions of dollars of revenue each year that you probably never think about.

Here are 5 unusual industries that consistently bring in millions or even billions in revenue.

1) World Wrestling Entertainment

You’re probably familiar with the cheesy television show or live events, but did you know that World Wrestling Entertainment is a public company that does more than half of a billion dollars in revenue each year? Their growth is accelerating too. Revenue in the first quarter of 2015 was 19% higher than the previous quarter.

Revenue comes from television, pay-per-view, and live events, merchandising, licensing and more. Others have tried to capitalize on the sport, but none have been more successful than Vince McMahon whose Word Wrestling Entertainment has a market cap well north of $1 billion. Wrestling is a billion dollar industry.

2) Patent Litigation “Insurance”

Patent litigation costs companies millions if not billions of dollars every year. With the rise in this form of liability, a need in the market was created. Companies needed a way to protect themselves from costly lawsuits. There are now firms that amass large portfolios of patents that then charge an annual fee to protect their clients from these lawsuits.

They are able to protect their clients by effectively licensing the patents within their portfolio as well as by using them as leverage if threatened by another company.

3) Transportation of Biological Materials

Obviously transportation is a massive industry; however, not all cargo can be shipped by standard carrier. There are a number of hazardous materials that require special care. Biological materials is one of these special cases.

Would you want infectious biological materials just thrown in the back of an 18-wheeler? This type of material requires special equipment and expertise to transport. There are a number of companies that focus entirely on the storage and transportation of biological material and the associated equipment. The site pbmmi.com list biostorage options and why biostorage is important in cold chain management, scientific transport, and lab relocation.

4) Treasure Hunting

Odyssey Marine Exploration is an interesting company. With a market cap over $50 million, the company’s sole source of revenue is bounties from shipwrecks. The company uses their expertise and specialized equipment to find a recover lost ships. The company is most notable for its find of a treasure worth more than $500 million off the coast of Florida. Unfortunately, the company lost its claim to this treasure in a heated court battle; however, the company continues to operate, recovering and selling treasure that it finds.

5) Museum Exhibitions

It’s not unusual for traveling exhibits to visit museums. What is unusual is a publically traded, for-profit company that owns and operates exhibits of this nature. Premier Exhibitions Inc. creates exhibits such as Titanic, Bodies the Exhibition, Real Pirates, Pompeii, King Tut, Cleopatra and Extreme Dinosaurs.

Visitors typically pay a premium in addition to the standard museum admission to see the exhibits. The company’s strategy is working with annual revenues of more than $30 million.

Entrepreneurship isn’t about creating a groundbreaking product or service. It’s about finding a hole in the market and filling it. There’s billions to be had out there, even in odd industries that involve biological waste, dinosaurs and fake wrestling.

Categories
Work Life

3 Strategies to Finish Your Day Strong

3 Strategies to Finish Your Day Strong

Ever notice that you remember best the parting words of a conversation? The last sentence your spouse says in the morning as you walk out the door. The concluding words of the team meeting.

A song that sticks in your head is most likely the last one you heard on your commute.

The identical principle applies to your work day. The concluding actions of yesterday ring loudly as you greet tomorrow-becoming-today.

Here are three strategies for you to finish your day strong so you prepare for a productive tomorrow:

Complete a Task

Interruptions are a given, an expected, regular occurrence. You grab the hose and put out fires daily.

The byproduct of these chronic productivity hiccups is incompleteness. You struggle to complete a task and that’s an emotional drain.

Find a task, even a small one, to complete before you leave for home. Arrange your desk. File papers or documents. Make tomorrow’s to-do list. Anything.

Completing one task at the end of your day creates a positive sense of satisfaction that greets you the next morning. It’s refreshing to walk in and re-experience yesterday’s success. It launches your confidence for completion in a new day.

Commit to fun with family and friends

You read a lot about work/life balance which looks great from 50,000 feet. Yet from where your feet hit the ground, it’s a tough act to balance.

Do this one thing: commit to fun with your family and friends. Define fun with them. Playing “Pretty, Pretty Princess” with your daughter. Tossing football with your son. A romantic meal you cook at home for your honey. Shooting hoops with the guys. A spa trip with the sisterhood. It’s all fun!

Commit to fun. Schedule it. Budget it. Do it.

Increase your productivity with it.

Cut off the TV

If you go to sleep immediately following the evening news or an episode of The Walking Dead, guess what your subconscious works on overnight? Fixing the national deficit. Catching a murderer. Running from zombies.

Instead, cut the TV off at least 10 minutes before you go to sleep. Write in your Work Positive Gratitude Diary. Give your mind something positive to process overnight. Wake up more refreshed.

Finish your day strong and create a better tomorrow. Do more in an hour than most business professionals do in a month so you can leave the office earlier to do what you love with those you love as you Work Positive in a negative world.

About the Author

Dr. Joey Faucette is the #1 Amazon best-selling author of Work Positive in a Negative World (Entrepreneur Press), coach, and speaker who helps business professionals increase sales with greater productivity so they get out of the office earlier. Discover more at www.ListentoLife.org.