Travel Tips- Security of Your Home Alone
While heading for a vacation, it is important to ensure the safety of your house in your absence. Take necessary steps and follow travel safety tips for security of your home from thieves, safety of your vehicles, safety of garden/plants and safety of your pets. You should ask someone to collect your incoming mails, newspapers and magazine subscriptions or stop them for a while. You may also consider paying all your bills and dues in advance to avoid inconvenience. If possible, request your friends or relatives to stay at your home for a couple of days and especially in night.Deceiving Thieves while On TravelA programmable electrical timer is a good alternate to mentor. You can program the timer to put on lights and any other equipment at the desired time. Setup the lighting in such a way that there is change in the pattern of lighting and some light can come on and off even in late nights. You may also connect a tape recorder with automatic light system. Feed in some common voices, noise in a tape, and insert it in recorder. Let it play once or twice in a day to insinuate that someone is in the house and it is not deserted.Other home safety travel tipso If you are leaving your home alone, switch off necessary electrical and electronic devices. Some times, you may want to keep your cooler or heater running for maintaining temperature for electronic devices’ safety.o Make sure all water taps are closed. Empty all water storages because by the time you are back, bacteria can germinate in your water storage. Either consume or dispose off all the foodstuffs in your refrigerator.o Double-check the locks, doors and windows before leaving the house. Put the keys in a safe place. You may also inform the police about your departure, so that they do not consider the burglar alarm as a false alarm.Travel Safety Tips for Senior CitizensIf you are leaving behind your old parents, make sure that somebody attends to them regularly. Provide them with a mobile phone and feed one number as hotline and others on the automatic dialing list. Old people often forget the numbers in emergency. You should store enough groceries and non-prescribed medicines so that they do not have to worry about their daily needs. Keep calling them once or twice a day. Let neighbors know about your absence and request them to take care of the old people.
3 Tips for Investing in Commercial Real Estate
So you’ve decided to expand your portfolio by investing in commercial real estate. You’ve studied commercial real estate, talked with investment advisors, and identified some likely investment properties. Congratulations on taking your first steps toward your new investment venture.What you’ve learned, so farCommercial and residential real estate are valued differently from each other. The income you derive from your commercial investment will be related to its usable square footage.Commercial property can help you diversify risk when you have more than one tenant.Cash flow may be greater. The yield on your commercial investment can be higher per square foot.Cash flow stability may also be greater because commercial real estate leases are longer (generally) than residential property leases.The bank values a commercial property differently from a residential property. You will need to work with a bank that works with commercial investment. And, most likely, that bank will want a higher down payment (as much as 30% or more).Tips for buying commercial real estate
Homework. You need to know about the “health” of your prospective commercial investment. These are some questions to ask:
What is the vacancy rate?What do current tenants like/dislike about doing business in that area?Do the tenants intend to renew their leases and how are their businesses doing?
Plan of Action. Establish your parameters: how much can you afford to pay and how much do you expect/want to make on your investment? What is your exit strategy? Who are your partners in this investment? How many tenants are already in place and likely to renew their leases? How many vacant rental spaces need to be filled?
Assemble your team of experts – legal, tax, and financial advisors; a commercial realtor.Create a list of prospective commercial investment properties.Begin your search.
Decision influencers
Location (it’s not just a residential property buzzword). What is the condition of the general area – depressed, growing, thriving? Visit the neighborhood yourself – don’t rely only on the impressions of others or the realtor’s description of the property and environment. Pay close attention to the number of vacancies in the surrounding in the neighborhood as well as in your property of interest.Condition. What is the current condition of the property? Do you need to make major changes or repairs to the structure and grounds? Is everything about the property up to code?Is the property in compliance with current zoning laws and development plans?Do a title search “so you know the property is not compromised by any pre-existing agreement.”Investing in commercial real estate is a time-consuming major undertaking and experienced investors say it takes plenty of patience. You should plan on spending a lot of time doing due diligence before reaching a decision and making an offer. Your effort and patience will be rewarded when you locate and purchase the commercial property that is right for your first investment.
How Do You Start in Photography?
This article will be about how you, the beginner, can start in, and learn photography. Below, I listed the sequence of things you should do or learn to guide you in your journey in the field of photography.So how to do you start with photography? Here are the initial steps:Start with the interest. You’re reading this blog, so I guess you’re interested in Photography.Learn the basics. What is photography? What are the basic elements and concepts you need to know to shoot the scenes you want to capture. Basics like ISO, Aperture, Shutter Speed, Composition, Exposure, Depth of Field, Focus, and many more should be the first things you learn.Get a camera. This is common sense. Without a camera, you can’t take pictures. If you’re not yet that committed into this hobby, don’t buy expensive cameras. Heck, just use what you have in your hand: you camera phone. You can already practice composition with it. But if you want to invest on a good camera, go ahead but make sure you have the means to pay for it.Read the manual. Or, as we oldies say, Read the F****** Manual. It’s free, it comes with your camera, and it’s full of answers to your most common questions about your camera.Shoot! Never forget to practice what you learn. By regularly shooting photos, you will be exposed to different fields of photography, like landscape, nature, portraiture, and others. Doing this will also allow you to identify which field you want to focus in.Identify your specialization. The more photos you take, the easier it is to identify which field of photography you want to focus in. If you discover you prefer landscapes over portraits then, learn as much as you can about landscapes. Don’t do wholesale learning where you try to learn every field all at the same time. Once you’ve learned to take good photos in one field, you can try and learn other fields that interests you.Learn from the Masters and the professionals. Most of the time, the best teachers are the ones who have learned and done photography to the level of being called masters. Try to learn from them by studying their works and books they wrote or were written about them. If the person you look up to is still alive, then getting it touch with them will be a better way to know them more. If they offer workshops or courses, attend those. A structured course is better than studying alone.That’s all! Well not really. There are a lot more things you should learn but the tips listed above will guide you well enough that your journey into photography will be fruitful and enjoyable.Happy Shooting!