If you are thinking of getting out of the rat race and starting your own business then you need to make sure that you get all the information you need before you head out. You need to make sure that you do all you can to boost your chances of success. The purpose of this article is to share with you three pieces of home-based business advice that can help you boost your chances of success.You need to make sure that you follow these three tips and I guarantee you that you will be more successful. You need to make sure that you:Have a separate business workspace- When you are starting your own home-based business you need to set up your own workspace. You need to make sure that it is separate from your home life. If you don’t have a separate workspace chances are that you will find yourself easily distracted by household chores. You need to make sure that you have your own home office or at least a desk with a computer and a filing cabinet.Continuously work to further educate yourself- You need to make sure that you work to constantly improve and educate yourself. Society and business are constantly changing. You do not necessarily need to complete formal courses but you can take a lot of online ecourse to improve yourself. At a very minimum you need to have a basic education in Search Engine Optimisation as well as other online marketing techniques. The internet is a very cost effective tool to market your business whether it is an online or offline business.Be realistic about your skills and chances of business success- Starting a home-based business is not as simple as buying in to a get rich quick scheme, not having to do anything and making a fortune. Running a home-based business requires time and effort. Also, some home-based business opportunities require more skills than others. For example, if you are not good at mathematics you probably don’t want to start a business such as a bookkeeping business. Also, if you are not confident with your writing then you will probably not get a job writing for other people. (Having said that, you need to further educate yourself so that you can put together your own basic article.)

When you start a home-based business, you can not think that you will succeed automatically. The fact is that the rate of success in a home based business is very less. If you want to succeed in your home business, there are a few characteristic traits you should have. If you do not have them, you can definitely acquire them also. But, you should be ready to take a few steps for acquiring them.But, if you do not care to do introspection and know your strengths, weaknesses and characteristics, failure may be waiting at your door steps. So, you should do an analysis of yourself and then take all possible steps to acquire the traits required for doing the business.- You should have the habit of setting goals because without having a goal, you can not succeed in your home business. Only when you have a goal, you can focus on it. You will be motivated to work for achievements only if you set a target for yourself.- Your desire towards the goal should be strong. Only a strong desire will push you to put forth extra efforts for achieving the goal in your home business. If you study the ways adopted by successful people, you may observe that they give more importance to the process of achieving success rather than to success itself. They enjoy their efforts and work and this motivates them to travel the extra mile for achieving great heights in their business.- While doing your home business, there may be road-blocks but if you are highly focused and keep targeting your goal, you will rise like a phoenix and start working again for succeeding in the business. You should analyze the reasons for these road-blocks and try to remove them from your track.- You should have a disciplined approach for succeeding in your home-based business because people are likely to have a slackened approach in home businesses. You have the benefits of flexible hours and the comfort of your home to spoil you and you may tend to procrastinate things. If you adopt such a lazy approach, you can never get closer to success. So, by planning your work and working your plan in an organized and disciplined manner, you can avoid the habit of procrastination and move faster towards success.- The same type of disciplined approach should be there in handling of your finances also. There should never be a shortage of funds and hence, you should ensure to have utmost discipline in financial matters.- You should keep abreast of the new innovations that take place in your field. It is not necessary that you should use all the innovations in your business. It is enough if you embrace those that are suitable to your level of business. By doing so, you can cater to the needs of your customers more effectively and hence, your business will grow better.- Practicing these steps consistently is very important. As they say, “Practice makes a person perfect”. So, you should strive hard to acquire the required traits. You may be quite strong in some of these traits and may be less strong in a few others. If you make your strong points more stronger, you can off-set your weaknesses in some of the other traits.If you acquire these traits and put forth your sincere efforts, you are sure to succeed in your home-based business.

The big hot topic on the news as the current economy. What is a real estate investor to do in a down market? What can a real estate investor do to increase their portfolio? Can I continue being a real estate investor in this economy/market? What are we going to do to fix the current economy? Who’s going to fix the current economy? How much money do we have to give large companies in order to fix their bottom line? Who’s to blame? How was the President-elect going to save us? Which new political party is going to come in and save the day? And most importantly, who is in the steer this boat to the Promised Land?

Here’s the answer: You the Real Estate investor/small business owner!

In the last 200 years of the economic growth of the United States of America, we have never faced an economic challenge like the one we have now. Our economy the last 50 to 60 years has slowly started to phase out from being in a commie based on manufacturing goods to becoming a service driven economy. Perfect example of this is the Internet. In the last 10 years that the Internet has been available to us, more millionaires have been made by offering information-based services than by actually manufacturing a physical product.

If we go back and look at our history. The past recessions, such as the 1920s as well as the more recent tastes and feelings of recession in the 70s 80s and a brief touch in the 90s. Most of these recessions were stopped or drastically shortened by the American worker getting out and putting their nose to the grindstone.

While government work programs and social projects can operate Band-Aid fix to the current economic crisis there and not the long-term solution. That comes down to the investor.

I’m going to be focusing on the real estate investor for one simple reason, the most immediate fusion of labor ready jobs across the nation falls into the real estate and the real estate services category. Real estate investors, for decades have made money, and in some case, the vast wealth by buying low income properties and fixing them and flipping them to other buyers were holding onto them and using them as the stable of their investments portfolio.

Let’s take a look at just of few examples of the basic services that are going to be used in utilized in order to accomplish a typical small-scale real estate investment. For the sake of discussion, we are going to use a single-family residence with a fix and flip tactic.

R.E. investor finds a property that would fall within a fix and flip category with a profit margin of say 30,000 after renovations and repair. Once a project has been purchased, the investor then sets out to increase curb appeal as well as make any renovations necessary to increase the property’s value. Now let’s look at some of the people that would be hired to accomplish this task.

The exterior of the house: we could be looking at a basic gardener to a landscaper all the way up to a landscape architect. Obviously the costs of each one of these individuals would increase depending on the severity and extensiveness of the project which their contracted.

For the interior of the house: we could have a handyman, a contractor/remodeler, electric contractor, heating and cooling specialist, drywall specialist, plumber, demolition crew, and any subcontractors needed to fill in the necessary skill base in order to increase the value of this investment property.(In the event of a room addition. Let’s not forget the necessary permits and inspectors required to bring the property up to code).

Now without getting into the ins and outs of who hires whom, be a contractor using day labor or a professionally managed and staffed crew, the point being made here is the immediate stimulus to the local working economy of the community.

Banks and lending institutions

Since the subprime lending crisis became top news in the middle of 2008, real estate investors have been scrambling to find funds to continue with their real estate investing operations. At the beginning of 2009 we have yet to see the banks who received bailouts, lift lending restrictions to small real estate investors, let alone the service companies that support them. This lack of available capital, which was so plentiful for the last several years, has caused a dramatic reduction in real estate investments. Which has helped put a stranglehold on economic recovery within the select area of national concern?

So how does the small time investor get around this problem?

Answer: Find new and alternate methods of funding.

This is where you have to break from that mold that you used. Just a short time ago with them last few years you could find an investment property walk into a bank and if you had a fairly decent credit score and the numbers made sense you could walk out with the loan. This is obviously no longer the case.

In the current economic climate the real estate investor needs to be more than savvy on just finding good real estate investments, he needs to be savvy on finding good networking contacts. This has never been more important than it is now. Few years ago during the height of the real estate surge. You could walk into a local real estate investment group. Maybe sit down at one of their meetings, and basically walk away with potential good solid leads on real estate investments. That’s because at the time the focus was on the property and not on procuring the funding.

The current economic climate forces us to change our focus. While property investments abound due to short sales and foreclosures, it is the funding that is in short supply. However, the funding is available.

Real estate investment groups have been around for decades. These groups are saturated with both traditional real estate lenders, as well as private and hard money lenders.

To many the term “hard money lender” conjures up evil pictures of greedy baseball bat wielding clubs that are prepared to cause you physical bodily harm in the event you don’t pay. While I’m sure these men exists in my many years of real estate investing. I have yet to actually meet one.

The most common trade-off of using a hard money lender or private money lender versus traditional lending is interest rate. Due to the fact that the interest rate is normally several points higher than a traditional loan. It becomes that much more critical of the real estate investor to do his due diligence and homework. When considering the property for investment.

Investment groups are also of extreme value to R.E. investor due to the networking opportunities beyond just funding. The new real estate investor has the opportunity to network and a vast amount of various with people at share the same common goals as their own, as well as greatly increases their learning curve without having to pay for it out of their own pocket.

So… You may ask yourself, why should you buy or invest in real estate in the First Place? Because it’s the IDEAL investment! Let’s take a moment to address the reasons why people should have investment real estate in the first place. The easiest answer is a well-known acronym that addresses the key benefits for all investment real estate. Put simply, Investment Real Estate is an IDEAL investment. The IDEAL stands for:

• I – Income
• D – Depreciation
• E – Expenses
• A – Appreciation
• L – Leverage

Real estate is the IDEAL investment compared to all others. I’ll explain each benefit in depth.

The “I” in IDEAL stands for Income. (a.k.a. positive cash flow) Does it even generate income? Your investment property should be generating income from rents received each month. Of course, there will be months where you may experience a vacancy, but for the most part your investment will be producing an income. Be careful because many times beginning investors exaggerate their assumptions and don’t take into account all potential costs. The investor should know going into the purchase that the property will COST money each month (otherwise known as negative cash flow). This scenario, although not ideal, may be OK, only in specific instances that we will discuss later. It boils down to the risk tolerance and ability for the owner to fund and pay for a negative producing asset. In the boom years of real estate, prices were sky high and the rents didn’t increase proportionately with many residential real estate investment properties. Many naïve investors purchased properties with the assumption that the appreciation in prices would more than compensate for the fact that the high balance mortgage would be a significant negative impact on the funds each month. Be aware of this and do your best to forecast a positive cash flow scenario, so that you can actually realize the INCOME part of the IDEAL equation.

Often times, it may require a higher down payment (therefore lesser amount being mortgaged) so that your cash flow is acceptable each month. Ideally, you eventually pay off the mortgage so there is no question that cash flow will be coming in each month, and substantially so. This ought to be a vital component to one’s retirement plan. Do this a few times and you won’t have to worry about money later on down the road, which is the main goal as well as the reward for taking the risk in purchasing investment property in the first place.

The “D” in IDEAL Stands for Depreciation. With investment real estate, you are able to utilize its depreciation for your own tax benefit. What is depreciation anyway? It’s a non-cost accounting method to take into account the overall financial burden incurred through real estate investment. Look at this another way, when you buy a brand new car, the minute you drive off the lot, that car has depreciated in value. When it comes to your investment real estate property, the IRS allows you to deduct this amount yearly against your taxes. Please note: I am not a tax professional, so this is not meant to be a lesson in taxation policy or to be construed as tax advice.

With that said, the depreciation of a real estate investment property is determined by the overall value of the structure of the property and the length of time (recovery period based on the property type-either residential or commercial). If you have ever gotten a property tax bill, they usually break your property’s assessed value into two categories: one for the value of the land, and the other for the value of the structure. Both of these values added up equals your total “basis” for property taxation. When it comes to depreciation, you can deduct against your taxes on the original base value of the structure only; the IRS doesn’t allow you to depreciate land value (because land is typically only APPRECIATING). Just like your new car driving off the lot, it’s the structure on the property that is getting less and less valuable every year as its effective age gets older and older. And you can use this to your tax advantage.

The best example of the benefit regarding this concept is through depreciation, you can actually turn a property that creates a positive cash flow into one that shows a loss (on paper) when dealing with taxes and the IRS. And by doing so, that (paper) loss is deductible against your income for tax purposes. Therefore, it’s a great benefit for people that are specifically looking for a “tax-shelter” of sorts for their real estate investments.

For example, and without getting too technical, assume that you are able to depreciate $15,000 a year from a $500,000 residential investment property that you own. Let’s say that you are cash-flowing $1,000 a month (meaning that after all expenses, you are net-positive $1000 each month), so you have $12,000 total annual income for the year from this property’s rental income. Although you took in $12,000, you can show through your accountancy with the depreciation of the investment real estate that you actually lost $3,000 on paper, which is used against any income taxes that you may owe. From the standpoint of IRS, this property realized a loss of $3,000 after the “expense” of the $15,000 depreciation amount was taken into account. Not only are there no taxes due on that rental income, you can utilize the paper loss of $3,000 against your other regular taxable income from your day-job. Investment property at higher price points will have proportionally higher tax-shelter qualities. Investors use this to their benefit in being able to deduct as much against their taxable amount owed each year through the benefit of depreciation with their underlying real estate investment.

Although this is a vastly important benefit to owning investment real estate, the subject is not well understood. Because depreciation is a somewhat complicated tax subject, the above explanation was meant to be cursory in nature. When it comes to issues involving taxes and depreciation, make sure you have a tax professional that can advise you appropriately so you know where you stand.

The “E” in IDEAL is for Expenses – Generally, all expenses incurred relating to the property are deductible when it comes to your investment property. The cost for utilities, the cost for insurance, the mortgage, and the interest and property taxes you pay. If you use a property manager or if you’re repairing or improving the property itself, all of this is deductible. Real estate investment comes with a lot of expenses, duties, and responsibilities to ensure the investment property itself performs to its highest capability. Because of this, contemporary tax law generally allows that all of these related expenses are deductible to the benefit of the investment real estate landowner. If you were to ever take a loss, or purposefully took a loss on a business investment or investment property, that loss (expense) can carry over for multiple years against your income taxes. For some people, this is an aggressive and technical strategy. Yet it’s another potential benefit of investment real estate.

The “A” in IDEAL is for Appreciation – Appreciation means the growth of value of the underlying investment. It’s one of the main reasons that we invest in the first place, and it’s a powerful way to grow your net worth. Many homes in the city of San Francisco are several million dollars in today’s market, but back in the 1960s, the same property was worth about the cost of the car you are currently driving (probably even less!). Throughout the years, the area became more popular and the demand that ensued caused the real estate prices in the city to grow exponentially compared to where they were a few decades ago. People that were lucky enough to recognize this, or who were just in the right place at the right time and continued to live in their home have realized an investment return in the 1000′s of percent. Now that’s what appreciation is all about. What other investment can make you this kind of return without drastically increased risk? The best part about investment real estate is that someone is paying you to live in your property, paying off your mortgage, and creating an income (positive cash flow) to you each month along the way throughout your course of ownership.

The “L” in IDEAL stands for Leverage – A lot of people refer to this as “OPM” (other people’s money). This is when you are using a small amount of your money to control a much more expensive asset. You are essentially leveraging your down payment and gaining control of an asset that you would normally not be able to purchase without the loan itself. Leverage is much more acceptable in the real estate world and inherently less risky than leverage in the stock world (where this is done through means of options or buying “on Margin”). Leverage is common in real estate. Otherwise, people would only buy property when they had 100% of the cash to do so. Over a third of all purchase transactions are all-cash transactions as our recovery continues. Still, about 2/3 of all purchases are done with some level of financing, so the majority of buyers in the market enjoy the power that leverage can offer when it comes to investment real estate.

For example, if a real estate investor was to buy a house that costs $100,000 with 10% down payment, they are leveraging the remaining 90% through the use of the associated mortgage. Let’s say the local market improves by 20% over the next year, and therefore the actual property is now worth $120,000. When it comes to leverage, from the standpoint of this property, its value increased by 20%. But compared to the investor’s actual down payment (the “skin in the game”) of $10,000- this increase in property value of 20% really means the investor doubled their return on the investment actually made-also known as the “cash on cash” return. In this case, that is 200%-because the $10,000 is now responsible and entitled to a $20,000 increase in overall value and the overall potential profit.

Although leverage is considered a benefit, like everything else, there can always be too much of a good thing. In 2007, when the real estate market took a turn for the worst, many investors were over-leveraged and fared the worst. They could not weather the storm of a correcting economy. Exercising caution with every investment made will help to ensure that you can purchase, retain, pay-off debt, and grow your wealth from the investment decisions made as opposed to being at the mercy and whim of the overall market fluctuations. Surely there will be future booms and busts as the past would dictate as we continue to move forward. More planning and preparing while building net worth will help prevent getting bruised and battered by the side effects of whatever market we find ourselves in.

Many people think that investment real estate is only about cash flow and appreciation, but it’s so much more than that. As mentioned above, you can realize several benefits through each real estate investment property you purchase. The challenge is to maximize the benefits through every investment.

Furthermore, the IDEAL acronym is not just a reminder of the benefits of investment real estate; it’s also here to serve as a guide for every investment property you will consider purchasing in the future. Any property you purchase should conform to all of the letters that represent the IDEAL acronym. The underlying property should have a good reason for not fitting all the guidelines. And in almost every case, if there is an investment you are considering that doesn’t hit all the guidelines, by most accounts you should probably PASS on it!

Take for example a story of my own, regarding a property that I purchased early on in my real estate career. To this day, it’s the biggest investment mistake that I’ve made, and it’s precisely because I didn’t follow the IDEAL guidelines that you are reading and learning about now. I was naïve and my experience was not yet fully developed. The property I purchased was a vacant lot in a gated community development. The property already had an HOA (a monthly maintenance fee) because of the nice amenity facilities that were built for it, and in anticipation of would-be-built homes. There were high expectations for the future appreciation potential-but then the market turned for the worse as we headed into the great recession that lasted from 2007-2012. Can you see what parts of the IDEAL guidelines I missed on completely?

Let’s start with “I”. The vacant lot made no income! Sometimes this can be acceptable, if the deal is something that cannot be missed. But for the most part this deal was nothing special. In all honesty, I’ve considered selling the trees that are currently on the vacant lot to the local wood mill for some actual income, or putting up a camping spot ad on the local Craigslist; but unfortunately the lumber isn’t worth enough and there are better spots to camp! My expectations and desire for price appreciation blocked the rational and logical questions that needed to be asked. So, when it came to the income aspect of the IDEAL guidelines for a real estate investment, I paid no attention to it. And I paid the price for my hubris. Furthermore, this investment failed to realize the benefit of depreciation as you cannot depreciate land! So, we are zero for two so far, with the IDEAL guideline to real estate investing. All I can do is hope the land appreciates to a point where it can be sold one day. Let’s call it an expensive learning lesson. You too will have these “learning lessons”; just try to have as few of them as possible and you will be better off.

Legal translation is a task that requires a lot of expertise and familiarity with linguistic conventions that apply to laws and legal cases.

Translations consist of taking a document in one language and switching it to another language whilst maintaining the same meaning. Legal translations deal with legal issues and terms. This field involves translating statutes, contracts, patents and any type of legal documentation. These documents are often used in legal proceedings where the initial original meaning must be maintained even after the translation.

Legal terminology is very complex and can vary from one country to another. Due to the fact that not every country has the same legal system, in some cases legal concepts do not have an equivalent in the target language. Codes and laws have been created to suit a particular country or culture and when the legal term does not have an equivalent in the target language, the translator needs to “recreate” the concept and the whole idea attached to the legal expression. “Transcreation” is a re-interpretation of the original concept to suit the audience of the target language in a particular time. It is very difficult to find equivalence between two terms if both legal languages refer to different legal systems.

Why Are Legal Translations Important?

Laws and codes seek to establish clearly defined rights and duties for certain individuals. The purpose of legal translation is to look for linguistic and juridical similarities between legal texts that belong to different legal systems. There are some cases where crimes might have similar meanings in two systems but are not identical; imply different connotations which lead to different sentences. The legal translator should be aware of intention of the original legal text and the interpretation (or interpretations) that has been attached to that text. The use of precedent is typical of Anglo-American common-law tradition that is built on the doctrine of stare decisis. (stand by decided matters)

Errors in legal translation could be fatal due to the effects that a legal misjudgment could have in the life and rights of individuals. It could also affect national security, diplomatic relations and lead to lawsuits.

To avoid mistakes, legal translators should be guided by standards of linguistic, social and cultural equivalence between the language used in the source text to and the target language. According to the expert on Comparative Law, Gerard-René de Groot, the difficulty of legal translations depend more on structural differences between legal systems rather than on linguistically differences.

Legal Translators

To deliver accurate translations, legal translators need to understand the different law systems as well as specific areas within law such as Criminal Law, Commercial Law, Property Law, etc. They also need to be competent in legal writing and have an in-depth knowledge of legal terminology. It is critical to assign legal translations to professionals that have the knowledge and experience to deal with them. It is also indispensable to have a deep understanding of Comparative Law system which helps to comprehend basic legal terms and structures in an international context.

What is Comparative Law?

It is the study of the diverse legal systems around the world and the differences and similarities between them. Comparative Law provides the foundation to create bilingual dictionaries that try to find equivalence among the elements of the source and the target legal texts.
Legal translators have a hard job because many legal concepts were originated within a particular social and political framework and may have no counterpart in other legal system. They must look for juridical and linguistic equivalence between the terms in order to find the pragmatic and functional equivalence in the concepts.

Comparative law methods help to create a reinterpretation of incompatible legal terms and to do so technical and pragmatist aspects of legal language should be taken into account. The equation is not that simple because some specialists prioritize the technical aspects of legal translation while other put emphasis on the connotative aspects of legal language. The convergence of these two approaches can facilitate the translation of legal texts.