Vacancies are costly. Likely you are paying a mortgage on your property and certainly you're paying taxes and insurance while your property is unoccupied and not producing income. Additionally, you have marketing costs to get your unit rented, or you are anticipating paying a portion of the first month's rent to your property manager or a tenant placement service. Bottom-line: money is tight when you have a vacant unit and you may be tempted to cut corners on the fix-up work to get your place rented.

This is almost always a mistake. A property in poor condition is going to sit on the market for much longer. If you are in a slow rental market with lots of competition, then it's even more important to make your property stand out as a desirable dwelling by paying attention to the major areas that will attract or repel potential tenants. The primary areas that you should focus on are:

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If you've been in business for any length of time, you'll find that there are more things to do then can be done in any given day, so you absolutely must prioritize to become a successful real estate investor.

The 80/20 rule, also called Pareto's Principle, tells us that a large percentage of our success is dependent on the significant few things. The general idea of the rule is that 80% of your results will come

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Here are 4 amazingly simple ways to get others to find great real estate deals for you.

First, and this is an obvious one, hire a real estate agent or broker to scour their multiple listing service (MLS) and only bring you the deals that meet your very specific criteria. The overwhelming majority of real estate agents and brokers are paid only when you buy or sell a property using their service. They can look through the inventory they have access to and share with you the ones that meet you very specific needs. Then, when you find one that works for you, you buy it with that real estate agent or broker. You get a great deal and they earn a commission.

Second, find

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Many real estate investors lose out on an untold number of real estate deals by pre-screening too much on the telephone. Far more real estate investors pre-screen too much even before the first phone call, but that's a topic for another day. Let's discuss why you should NOT pre-screen for motivation on the phone if you want to buy more deals, with better terms and at better prices.

Are you the type of guy or gal that asks/asked if they're going to get an

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If you are using a blank sheet of paper or, even worse, scraps of paper to jot down information about potential properties when you are talking to potential motivated sellers on the phone for your initial call, shame on you!

You should be taking down all the information about the property and sellers in an organized fashion. If you do not have a Property Information Sheet to use to gather this information for your own real estate investing business, then get one or, as a last resort, make your own and use it for every call.

Most of the information you'll gather is

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So you've put out some marketing and had some potentially motivated sellers call you. Whether you are taking the call live or returning the call from a voice mail message, here is a big picture overview of the process for talking to motivated sellers for the first time.

First off, do not... I repeat... DO NOT... research the deal before you talk to the seller. Get back on the phone with the seller as quickly as possible and without doing ANY work on the file before you call. There will be plenty of other areas to procrastinate where it is to your advantage to do so... this should NOT be one of them.

If you can, take the call live from motivated sellers. If not, return phone calls as soon as you can.

For this initial call, you will want to

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There are many ways to increase your response rate when marketing for your real estate investing business, but today I am going to talk specifically about a general one that can be applied to ALL of your marketing. This one simple method can be used to give you a small boost in response regardless of what type of media or message you are using, or what market you are targeting (the 3 Ms of Marketing). What is it?

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In your search for great deals, you are probably utilizing all of the resources that you know of to find the next deal worthy of your investment time and money. This probably includes scouring craigslist ads, calling on FSBOs, and following up on your own marketing if you have any out. You may also be using a real estate agent as a source for deals. As the number of bank owned properties on the market increases, real estate agents are especially useful as sources to find and negotiate these types of deals.

However, you may need to train your real estate agent to cater to your particular needs as an investor. While there are some great investor friendly real estate agents out there, there are also many agents with little experience dealing with investing or dealing with investors. These agents can still hook you up to good deals, but

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If it's time to fill a vacancy for one of your rentals, you will want to get the maximum marketing exposure possible. Chances are, that if you are reading this article online, you already understand the value of the internet. Three lines of description in your local print newspaper is no longer enough to get the phone ringing with enough interested renters in most markets.

With the widespread availability of the internet and the ease of accessing information on it, most of your potential tenants expect much more than a brief description of the raw data of their future dwelling – i.e. beds, baths, square footage and rent. Instead of spending all day on the weekend driving around looking at potential rental units, most of your tenant pool will prefer to browse through full color photographs of available rentals from the comfort of their favorite computer station. Many internet sites even offer virtual tours of available units, so to be competitive in our current marketplace, you need to make sure that you have the marketing out to reach all of these internet-surfing apartment hunters.

In addition to posting ads with full color photographs on popular sites like Craigslist,

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Unless you own all of your rental properties free and clear, chances are that you have some escrow accounts with your lenders. These escrow accounts are fed every month from your mortgage payments and this money is supposed to be used by the bank to pay your annual property taxes and insurance premiums. While it is tempting to let this system run on autopilot, you really shouldn't rely on your bank to get this right. Banks do make mistakes, some more frequently than others. While I personally may just have bad luck, I have had more than my fair share of challenges with different banks messing up my insurance payments over the years.

Of all the bizarre things that I have seen happen to my escrow accounts over the years, recently one of my lenders paid someone else's premium from my escrow account. Needless to say, after receiving telephone confirmation that this issue has been resolved, I am monitoring my escrow account very closely to make sure that the premium is returned to my account.

Most of the time though, when your bank messes up, it is just an annoyance that requires some extra time on the phone.

Here are some of the things that can go wrong when your bank doesn't pay your insurance premiums:

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At our monthly real estate investor meeting last week (here in Northern Colorado), I discussed with the group my preferred strategy for getting a huge marketing advantage to sell houses quickly for full price. This is the strategy I recommend BEFORE deciding to drop the price on your properties. It is especially effective with low interest rates.

Here's how it works. Let's say you are trying to sell a $200,000 home and you'd consider dropping the price $10,000 and selling it for $190,000 to get it sold quickly. Rather than dropping the price $10,000, you might instead consider

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Did you know that dog bites make up one-third of all homeowner insurance liability claims? I just read this alarming tidbit in the November issue of the AAA newsletter. If you are a landlord who rents to tenants with dogs, then this statistic should give you pause.

Many insurance companies won't cover liability for dog bites for your rental policy. Depending on the state that you live in, it is not clear that your tenant can get personal liability insurance to cover dog bites either.

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