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I’ve been asked to speak for a group of investors about marketing. Internet marketing is how I make my day-to-day living, so that’s obviously going to be a big part of that. I have a decent amount of property management experience, so I’ll work from that angle as well.

What do you think think are the ‘must cover’ topics in a 45 minute or hour long presentation?

Please leave a comment or drop me an email on the subject.

Topics I’m thinking about discussing:

• Where to advertise rentals
• Testing: Ad Copy, Calls to Action, Paper/Physical/Websites
• Photos
• Your own website
• Search engines….not as mysterious as you’d think.
• Why attracting JV partners with your website will be the death of you
• Why Social Media will then become your best friend
• And why your website will be useful in that process

More thoughts? What am I missing?

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On Tuesday I took the opprotunity to speak at Rod O’Keefe’s OMREIC group. Hopefully I provided a little persective, made people think a little and pissed off anyone who is investing in Phoenix.

Here’s a slideshare of my presentation, and links etc are below the presentation. I talked about Edmonton’s Black Triangle (the original blog post is here) and the four main points were:

• Why Edmonton is the best place in Canada to invest in real estate
• Edmonton’s Goldmines and Landmines
• Managing from a distance 
• Edmonton’s Property Management Scene

The advertising tests that Brent is running can be found here: Testing Edmonton Rental Websites and Drowning in a Sea of Ads. 

To the young man who was asking about internet marketing, you were looking for Hubspot and SEOmoz. 

And Rod mentioned REIN’s BC Top Ten Towns Report. You can buy a copy for yourself here for $57.97. Don did a good interview on Global Vancouver (video below).

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Today’s February 11th, and that makes it my one year Enquiroversary. I tried to find a post from back then, but the only thing that makes any sense is a funny video about the subprime crisis.
Besides the admiration of my co-workers and a free lunch, I got a cool present. I had been asked to present (again) at CBD network, a group which helps professionals define their career paths and find employment in the Okanagan valley.

Here’s a copy of my slides, and I’ve put some links below.

Here are some of the links I mentioned during my presentation:

• The blogging software: WordPress
• Getting your own domain name (www.chrisdavies.ca): Netfirms or Godaddy. Both also have one-button installations of WordPress, which is simpler than trying to set it up yourself.
• Tracking your website: Google Analytics
• The super-cool book where those graphs came from was Indexed.

Enjoy!

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We all need access to good information to base our decisions on, and part of my mission is to share some good statistics with y’all. That’s why I’ve been compiling some statistics for you to use. However, just the numbers won’t help you. I’m including graphs, charts and other ways to help interpreit the information and make strategic decisions.

To help make this more useful, help me pick which graphs you like the most:

Interactive Line Graphs

Scrolling Time Series Charts (like in Google Finance)

Motion Charts (comprising multiple dimensions)

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My name is Chris, and I’m addicted to powerpoint.

They say that admitting the problem is the first step to recovery. I just happen to like making good presentations. And I like helping other people make good presentations.

Presenting Real Estate Investment Numbers to Joint Venture Partners

Today’s slide deck is an example of the slides I’ll use to communicate some numbers to a joint venture partner. It’s hard to communicate a lot of numbers using presentation software (powerpoint, keynote, Google docs, open office or whatever you use.) What’s the solution?

Don’t use slides to communicate complex numbers.

Powerpoint isn’t supposed to be a document. It supports what you have to say. Create a document or a spreadsheet with all the numbers, and give it to them as a take-away. Then you’re free to make a slidedeck with only the information you want to share, and actually maintain people’s focus.

How do you un-suck un-clutter your slidedeck?

Delete everything you possibly can.

Slide number 10 in this presentation is a good example of what I mean. As few numbers and words as possible; no need for any axis clutter, only labels for each bar. No grid lines, I’ve used the values instead. There’s only one point on the slide, and you can’t miss it. $21,520.15 in positive cash flow .

There’s only one element where I added more detail than is needed. I’ll mail a cookie to the first person to correctly guess what that is.

About the numbers

I struggled with these numbers. What I’ve used is the real numbers from my last property. It’s not a typical revenue property by my standards. We got a good deal on the way in, and the renovations went off without too many hitches. We originally guessimated $20,000 for the reno. It ended up being just over $25,000 (the actual number is in the slidedeck). The $250,000 appraisal is an actual hard number. It’s currently rented to a nice couple who are paying $1,500 a month and utilities.

I thought about dumbing things down; making the $250,000 appraisal to be just $230,000. Using a 3% per-year appreciation model, instead of my standard 5% appreciation.

In the end, I decide to be completely transparent with the numbers. We did buy it for $190k. The renos were just over $25k, and it does rent for $1,500. The mortgage will be 4.5% or less, with interest only payments, and I’ve included the CHMC fees for doing a 90% mortgage. I may post the spreadsheet in the future.

Here you go!

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