It’s always nice to get mail, and it was particularly nice to get this big package in the mail. It’s a copy of Magnetic Real Estate Photography by Carla Johnson, a REIN member from Ontario.

I’m looking forward to reading it, both because I like taking photos and because I’m often entertained by the horrible photos on LovelyListing.

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Thomas Beyer is the President of Prestigious Properties, and a veteran (Diamond) REIN member. He’s also a great guy, a prolific contributor to myREINspace and he’s contributed guest posts here before (2010 Alberta Real Estate).

In preparation for the REIN meetings this week in Edmonton and Calgary, Thomas and Russel did a little conference call. It’s just over an hour long, but they cover lots of good topics.It’s a rare chance to hear the owner of hundreds of millions of dollars worth of real estate reflect on the last few years, and the challenges involved in growing his business to that size in just a few years.

Some folks had trouble downloading it, but they got it sorted out, and now you can just click the little arrow below and listen to it from this page. You can also download a copy of it by right clicking here and selecting ‘save as’.

Enjoy!

If you want to put a copy of this interview and the player on your own site, just paste this code into your html editor. You’re welcome to hotlink the mp3 file if you ask, otherwise just put a copy of the file on your own server and change the red text to where your copy of the file lives. 

<object width=”300″ height=”52″ data=”http://www.odeo.com/flash/audio_player_standard_gray.swf” type=”application/x-shockwave-flash”><param name=”flashvars” value=”valid_sample_rate=true&amp;external_url=http://www.chrisdavies.ca/Podcasts/thomas-beyer-rein-interview.mp3” /><param name=”src” value=”http://www.odeo.com/flash/audio_player_standard_gray.swf” /><param name=”wmode” value=”transparent” /><param name=”quality” value=”high” /></object> Audio Hosted by <a href=”http://www.chrisdavies.ca/2009/03/thomas-beyer-russell-westcott-interview/”>Chris Davies</a>

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This guest post was kindly contributed by QMan, a REIN member and educator. You’re sure to see more from him in the future. - Chris

The Challenge
One of the challenges I face is trying to identify the going rents for a given pocket of a particular community before we make our purchases to help determine cash flow. Our real estate agents our great at giving us guidance, but I’m always trying to give that extra 10%.

What You Need:

• Spreadsheet Template from BatchGeocoder Web Site
• Google Account to Save Your Rental Map
• Tine and A Little New Knowledge

One Solution:

I have been gathering rent data from rental web sites and plotting them across a given area. It takes about 10-15 minutes to gather the data, by cutting and pasting into my spreadsheet.

Here’s an example of going to Craigslist and Kijiji to find out rents for Pickering.

1. You copy and paste the address and rental information into the spreadsheet template provided by BatchGeocoder. See the attached rental spreadsheet (to download, right click and save as).
2. You paste the cells that have text from your spreadsheet into BatchGeocoder. It validates the information and spits out a sample map, when you click the appropriate buttons.
3. At the bottom is a button “Download to Google Earth” – save the file to your desktop.
4. Login to your Google account – go to Maps – and select “My Maps.”
5. Create a New Map and Import the file you downloaded to your computer.

You now have a Rental Map that you can return to or build upon. Here’s the map that was generated by the spreadsheet. Try clicking on one of the little black dots.

View Larger Map

Also, here’s a more detailed spreadsheet you can play with. Original Post on myREINspace.

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