Quotes and thoughts on real estate

“Ninety percent of all millionaires become so through owning real estate.”
Andrew Carnegie

“It’s tangible, it’s solid, it’s beautiful. It’s artistic, from my standpoint, and I just love real estate.”
Donald Trump

DISCLAIMER: I do not agree with or like all of the quotations listed below about real estate and property. I publish these here for various reasons- they made me think, they made me laugh, or they are just simply worth considering and pondering about.
Enjoy.

“Ninety percent of all millionaires become so through owning real estate.”
Andrew Carnegie

“It’s tangible, it’s solid, it’s beautiful. It’s artistic, from my standpoint, and I just love real estate.”
Donald Trump

“A man complained that [on] his way home to dinner he had every day to pass through that long field of his neighbor’s.  I advised him to buy it, and it would never seem long again.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson

“Landlords grow rich in their sleep.”
John Stuart Mill

“Buying real estate is not only the best way, the quickest way, the safest way, but the only way to become wealthy.”
Marshall Field

“Every person who invests in well-selected real estate in a growing section of a prosperous community adopts the surest and safest method of becoming independent, for real estate is the basis of wealth.”
Theodore Roosevelt

“Real estate cannot be lost or stolen, nor can it be carried away. Purchased with common sense, paid for in full, and managed with reasonable care, it is about the safest investment in the world.”
Franklin D. Roosevelt

“Real estate is at the core of almost every business, and it's certainly at the core of most people's wealth. In order to build your wealth and improve your business smarts, you need to know about real estate.”
Donald Trump

“Everyone wants a piece of land. It's the only sure investment. It can never depreciate like a car or a washing machine. Land will double its value in ten years. In less than that. Land is going up every day.”
Sam Shepard

“Golf courses sell real estate and that's why they're built.”
Ed McMahon

“Now, one thing I tell everyone is learn about real estate. Repeat after me: real estate provides the highest returns, the greatest values and the least risk.“
Armstrong Williams
“No man but feels more of a man in the world if he have a bit of ground that he can call his own.  However small it is on the surface, it is four thousand miles deep; and that is a very handsome property.“
Charles Dudley Warner
“If property had simply pleasures, we could stand it; but its duties make it unbearable.  In the interest of the rich we must get rid of it.“
Oscar Wilde

“I told my mother-in-law that my house was her house, and she said, "Get the hell off my property."
Joan Rivers

“I've never lived in a building without my name on it.”
Ivanka Trump

“I made a tremendous amount of money on real estate. I'll take real estate rather than go to Wall Street and get 2.8 percent. Forget about it.”
Ivana Trump

"It is a comfortable feeling to know that you stand on your own ground. Land is about the only thing that can't fly away."
Anthony Trollope

“Don’t wait to buy real estate, buy real estate and wait.”
Will Rogers

“I am a marvelous housekeeper. Every time I leave a man I keep his house.”
Zsa Zsa Gabor

5+1 tips to rent (or sell) your property this fall/winter season

 As temperatures dip, and leaves fall with the promise of winter ahead, real estate sales and rentals also cool with weather. But even in Budapest, Hungary, with a market that’s hitting bottom now, if you’re looking to sell or rent, not everything is lost.

Now, you may ask, with the incredible abundance of properties for sale and for rent alike, how do you plan to make your property go? Well, it is certainly not easy, and you can complain about the impossible market, but have you done the necessary steps to make your flat or house more compelling than the others? Here’s what you need to do to set your property apart from the competition:

1. Lighten up: fall is a time of less natural light, which as we all know, is the most important weapon against “winter blues”.  Now, you don’t want to cause your potential buyers or tenants to get a seasonal affective disorder just by entering your home, so make sure there’s enough light when you’re showing. Always open all the blinds and curtains, and turn on the lights on dark areas of the apartment such as corridors or pantries. If you can, try to schedule the showing at an hour when there’s still daylight, or, even better, if you can get lucky and show it on a sunny day, your home is almost sold.

2. Warm it up: one of the major turn-offs for buyers or renters is a cold apartment or house, and they won’t give the property the chance it deserves. By spending a little extra money on heating it up before showing and therefore making your home warm and inviting goes a long way. One important advice, though: don’t overdo it. When your prospective clients enter all bundled up in their winter coats, the last thing you want is to make them is sweat. I’d say keeping the temperature around 19-20 Celsius degrees would be perfect.

3. Maintain landscaping: While flowers aren’t exactly flourishing in this time of the year, there are several ways to make your home nicer and more appealing. If your property is a house, or in a small condo with a garden, make sure the grass is cut once a week, and pay special attention to clearing the leaves before the showing.

4. Move if you can: inhabited properties are always much harder to rent or to sell. This has several reasons, one of which is that most people have a hard time (meaning completely unable to) imagine a flat or a house without all the owner’s furniture and/or personal belongings in it. So move out of the apartment if you can, but at least hide all the personal belongings you can. The more neutral you make the place, the bigger the chance of renting or selling quickly.  

5. Make nice photos: taking simple but effective and nice shots of your property is essential. Think about it: when you start advertising your real estate, what is the first thing people will look at and decide if they’re interested at all? Exactly. The photos of the property you’re offering. So why not spend a little more time on making it as good as possible. I advise you get or borrow a good camera, because no matter how good your smart phone is, it’s not going to take the same quality pictures as a device specifically designed for taking photographs. Wait for a nice sunny day, make the bed, organize your house, get some fresh flowers, and start taking those shots. You can even enhance them on your computer pretty easily with circa the 3,000 software that’s out there, but be careful: if you overdo it, and lie too much about your real estate, people will be disappointed when they come and see the reality.

5 + 1. Pricing: Know the saying about the 3 most important factors in real estate? “Location, location, location”. There’s another 3 right here, when you actually want to sell or rent: “Pricing, pricing, pricing”. It cannot be emphasized enough that an overpriced real estate will sit empty for a long time, so it is imperative that you price your property reasonably. It is not an easy task, but if you’re uncertain, you can always  ask a real estate agent for an approximate price, or have an appraiser look at your apartment for a more accurate estimate.  

Obligatory "green card" for rental properties?

From January 2012 , residential property owners who wish to rent their properties in Hungary will be obliged to provide an energy efficiency certificate, also known as “green card” for their real estate.  

Sellers of properties have been required to provide this certificate since 2009, now it is time to go for the landlords, government reckons. Now owners who wish to rent their properties will be obliged to acquire and present the certificate to the renter before signing the contract. The certificate will need to be provided by an auditor, who, of course, for a small fee, will examine condition of the doors and windows, insulation, walls, and energy efficiency of the heating system of the property. After that, they calculate the energy consumption of the real estate and give it a rating from “A+” to “I”.  To comply with the regulations and to be called an “energy saving home”, the property has to achieve category “C”.

Properties that have a base area smaller than 50 sqm are exempt from this ruling.

So another serious time consuming and bureaucratic nightmare awaits property owners, but truth be told, this might be good news for the tenants: they do not have to rely any more on the words of the landlord when trying to guesstimate the prices of expected utilities, especially that of the heating bill.  It could also be beneficial to the owners, however, since a good certificate would increase the value and therefore it might affect the rental price of the property.

Now, Hungary would not be the incredibly successful and widely respected country as it is, if it didn’t have a loophole in every ruling. This is exactly the case here, too: providing this certificate is only required when the rental period is defined as more than one year long.

I wonder if we’ll ever see a contract for 13 months or more again…

You can check for more details on the site of the Chamber of Hungarian Architects (all in Hungarian).

Invitation to Property Investment Forum 2011 Budapest

I cordially invite you to the 7th Portfolio.hu Property Investment Forum 2011, the annual meet of leading real estate professionals, developers, investors, bankers, agencies, and other players in the industry. The conference will be held on 8th November, 2011, in the RaM Colosseum, Budapest, Hungary. According portfolio.hu, this annual meeting has become the largest real estate conference in Central-Eastern-Europe in the past five years. 

You can read more about this at our Budapest real estate website.

Welcome!

Welcome to the Budapest Real Estate Blog!

My Name is Norbert Stahl, and together Christopher S. Ford,  we are the owners of  Metropolitan Homes Budapest, an exclusive real estate agency focused on helping foreigners in Budapest finding their homes or making their property investment more profitable.
I have started this blog to help everyone who is interested in buying, selling, renting a property in Budapest, Hungary. I'll try to provide high quality, interesting content regarding residential real estate matters, real estate investments in Budapest, tax issues, and legal matters.
I'm also planning posting advice on purchases, rentals, renovations, decorations, and tips on maximizing your profit if you have an apartment for rent in Budapest.
From time to time, when I find an interesting apartment or house for sale or for rent in Budapest, I'll write a post about it and see what you think.
Visitors and readers of this blog are always welcome to comment on the posts, in fact, I encourage you to do so, please tell me your opinion!