How to make finding a tenant a doddle?
To find a tenant with tenanthunter.com is a doddle even for tenants who need a reliable person to take over a lease or for landlords. Professional letting agencies can work effectively with proper skills and they have a database to find a proper tenant. If you let a flat for students or a young couple, an experienced agent can match a property and a resident.
If you decide you can do it yourself, then it is essential to check a prospective tenant’s credit history or identity, and the references before deciding to let your property. Remember to ask for a guarantor if you are not sure that a person can pay the rent. All these steps are much easier than having to evict a tenant problem. Read all…
Glenn Grassi’s “micro-house” in Erie is big on efficiency
ERIE In a town where 2,400-square-foot houses with finished basements dominate the marketplace, Glenn Grassi is betting the other way.
Oh, sure, his home has all the basics you’d expect toilet, shower, bed, chair, table, stove, sink, even a hardwood floor.
But when all you’ve got is 84 square feet to work with, certain efficiencies must come into play. Grassi’s bed doubles as a shower, his chair doubles as a commode, and his wood-burning stove doubles as a furnace and cooking surface.
It’s spartan and spare, but the 41-year-old theater-set designer thinks such tight and cozy quarters are the wave of the future.
“You find what’s important and what’s not important,” Grassi said, as he slid open a refurbished and repurposed window on the side of his newly constructed mobile “micro-house,” which was parked in a quiet Erie neighborhood last month.
What Grassi who lived in an RV in Los Angeles after discovering that his rock-band neighbors liked practicing in the apartment over his head finds important is what an increasing number of Americans who have put their faith in the burgeoning “small house movement” find important. Read all…
Web an increasing tool to link campaigns, voters
NEW YORK (AP) — As potential voters in New Hampshire and Iowa scan the Internet, they probably are seeing ads for Republican Mitt Romney and President Barack Obama alongside deals for shoes and holiday gifts.
The campaign ads will then follow those voters around the Web, popping up on news sites, Google searches and on social networking sites like Facebook.
Online advertising, once used primarily as a way to reach young and heavily wired consumers, has emerged as an essential communications tool in the 2012 presidential contest. While few expect Web ads to supplant television commercials anytime soon, strategists say online ads may be the most nimble, efficient and cost-effective way to reach voters.
“Online advertising cuts through because of its ability to target. It’s unparalleled in any other medium,” said Romney’s digital director, Zac Moffatt. “TV may be more effective for driving a big message, but per usage, the Internet is more powerful.
One is Wonderful, Two is Terrific, Three is Threatened, Four is (unprintable)
Google has got a helluva position. However much other search engines try to displace it from its top dog position, it just powers on. I guess that we’ve all the seen the Google Market Share stats in the UK – dominance with a 91% share in the latest Hitwise figures.
What the hell?
All you need to know is that the Bing and Yahoo and all the rest (who are all the rest) make up less than one in ten searches in the UK. Their dominance in the UK is way higher than their level of success in native land. In the US, Google has only (I can’t believe I said “only”) 66%, with Bing and Yahoo both having a 15% share.
So Google dominates search. So far so obvious, what might be a bit more interesting is the click through rate data that I’ve discovered from searchengineland. What it shows is that Google also dominates in another important respect: your chances on actually clicking on a link are essentially double on a Google search result as opposed to one from Bing. <
Glimmer of hope for Myer’s Christmas sales
Myer chairman Howard McDonald has told shareholders at the department store’s annual meeting this morning that while there were no clear short-term indicators of when consumer confidence would return to more normal levels the business remained highly leveraged to an upturn.
He said the recent cut in official interest rates by the Reserve Bank was “certainly a step in the right direction” to improving consumer confidence in the lead-up to the crucial Christmas trading period.
The relatively upbeat assessment of the trading environment is in stark contrast to the poorer picture of retail painted yesterday at the Woolworths annual meeting and by rival David Jones at the release of it’s first-quarter sales performance.
Mr McDonald said Myer’s first-quarter sales of $681 million, down 3.5 per cent, was in line with expectations and assuming no further deterioration of the trading environment the company reaffirmed that it anticipated full-year 2012 sales to be flat and net profit to be up to 10 per cent below 2011.
Myer chief executive Bernie Brookes said the business had remained profitable during very tough economic times, characterised by high savings rates and conservative consumers.
The department store had exited a number of lines including segments within home entertainment and electronics to capture better value for shareholders.
Mr Brookes said flat screens televisions, for example, had dropped in price by more than 20 per cent and the department store owner was focusing on areas it could target effectively, such as coffee machines and smaller electrical appliances, rather than categories such as home entertainment that remained highly price competitive.