Ethics is defined as a system of moral principles and the rules of conduct governing a particular group etc. In real estate, as in any business, it’s important to maintain a set of ethics.

One of the reasons for the humongous bailout that was signed into law in October was the unscrupulousness of mortgage brokers. They allowed risky loans on appraisals that did not accurately reflect the true value of a property. And they sold mortgages to people who had poor credit and were really unable to make the monthly payments to the bank.

That’s why it’s important for real estate investors who are buying and rehabbing properties to conduct themselves with a high set of morals and ethics. Even though it has become more difficult for honest investors to secure home loans because of the unethical behavior of others in the industry, it is important to not lower your ethics or standards to make a deal—especially when your ethics can be called into account.

When you’ve purchased a property, rehabilitated it and are ready to rent it out, keep in mind that you are expected to act with a set of ethics when landlording to your tenants.

You have an obligation to maintaining the property for the tenant who is renting and the neighborhood as well. If your tenants are not law abiding, cause problems for their neighbors and do other behaviors, it is up to you to develop a plan for evicting them. Even if they’re paying you on time, you owe it to the others in the neighborhood to rid your property of an unethical tenant.

It would appear that many landlords are just happy to have someone in their property paying the rent and thus providing the landlord with liquid capital, but if the tenant is causing problems for the neighborhood, the only action is eviction. Finding a new tenant who follows the rules would be worth the few months of keeping the property empty rather than allowing the problem to remain.

Being an ethical real estate investor is important to the neighbors you buy your property around and to the industry which has suffered a black eye in the recent past.

The problems the fall in the housing market, and the negative effects this fall has had on Wall Street means that interest rates for home buyers could go down. And according to Dean Graziosi this could be good for investors, but it could also be outweighed by the higher unemployment and a recession. It could also be beneficial to you as an investor, depending on how long you plan on keeping the home. If you plan on buying and keeping the property for a few years then this is the time to buy, but if you are looking for a quick turn around then you need to keep your eye on the market and see what happens next.

With the Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc Chapter 11 filing, and the Bank of America take over of Merril Lynch, investors are leery of the real estate market and of stocks opting for safer investments.

What Does all This Mean for the Financial Investor

There are actually two trains of thought that are going on with regards to the financial crisis. Essentially it’s the people that see the glass half full and those that see it half empty theory. The optimists believe that these financial crisis, and failures are a ¨cathartic event. ¨This means that companies that are weak financially will be repaired through mergers, just like the Bank of America deal and that we should be out of our financial crunch in a year or so.

The good thing is that the U.S. is willing to handle its financial mishaps right from the start, as shown in the Treasury Departments refusal to help with the Lehman buyout. It appears that policy makers don’t foresee a financial system collapse and believe the crisis will soon be over.

The less optimistic group says it may take every bit of ten years for us to come out of this financial crisis.

Dean graziosi is a member of the optimists group. Imagine, if the financial crisis lasts for a year or two, and you buy real estate property at a discount, and take advantage of the low interest rates, how much further you will be ahead of everyone else when the real estate market and the financial market come out of this slump in a year or so. You will have bought your investment property at a great price and have tremendous advantage over everyone else.

What if you could save as much as $400 a month for the next thirty years on your energy bill? All you would have to do is add another $5000.00 to your mortgage or down payment. That’s what people can save when they decide to make the extra investment of buying an energy efficient home.

On the other hand if you are a real estate investor making a home more energy efficient can make you more of an upfront profit when you decide to sell the home. Experts like Dean Graziosi are paying close attention to energy efficient homes and the new green mortgages. Legislators, brokers and lenders are doing to promote this type of home.  People that are in favor of greener homes, say that the new green home programs give the nation a lot of solutions.

In fact the new green mortgages are becoming popular among home buyers and real estate investors alike. These are mortgages where a lender will add as much as 15% to the sale price of a loan, when that amount is used to make the new home more energy efficient.

Green mortgages have been around since the 70s but are just now gaining popularity. For many years these types of mortgages lied dormant because of the easy availability of cheap oil, gas, and electricity. And that is without even touching the fact that cheap subprime loans were available for many years.

Lenders and mortgage brokers tried to avoid green loans because they took a long time to close and didn’t offer any extra profit for them. But now with the mortgage and financial market crisis, everything has changed! Lenders and even the government see green mortgages as a great new type of loan.

The Government is Promoting the Green Mortgage

Local government, major mortgage lenders and even the President are supporting green mortgages. Even the Economic Recovery Act of 2008 has a provision in regards to the green mortgage.

Another bill passed by the House Financial Services committee and now awaiting a house hearing, would give lenders other incentives if they offered lower interest rates on these Green mortgages.

The real estate market across the entire country is ´topsy turvy.¨ In some areas the housing market is stabilizing. This is because the decline in home prices has cause a spur in home sales in some areas. But other areas remain in uncertainty and the downward trend continues. This has caused many real estate marketers to get more creative. There are some important techniques that some real estate agents have started to use as a way of increasing business, and which you as a real estate investor can use too. One of the greatest tools real estate agents and marketers have started to use, and which you as a real estate investor can use to market your property is the Internet.

¨The internet has become a ¨huge¨ tool, one that we all need to take advantage of,¨says Dean Graziosi. But many of us are not doing so, and that is usually because we don’t have the technological knowledge, and don’t believe that it is worth investing in.

Dean Graziosi believes that the internet can be a powerful marketing tool for anyone, and some real estate agents are picking up on it too. There is no reason why you as a real estate investor cannot use it to help you sell your property.  What we are talking about is the use of the email marketing campaign.

An effective real estate marketing tactic is the use of personalized email campaigns. These email campaigns can help a real estate agent, or a real estate investor forge a strong bond with a potential buyer.

Here are just a few ways you can use email marketing techniques to your advantage:

1. When you send an email to a potential buyer always be polite and say hello. Too many people just jump right in to the business at hand and don’t even address the reader directly. Give your prospective buyer a personal greeting.
2. Address any real concerns a prospective buyer may have. Don’t make it a mass mailing.
3. Put together a list of prospects you have talked with before and send them a personal email once in a while
4. Start a monthly newsletter if you want. It makes prospective clients become familiar with you.
5. Run a sales campaign by notifying any prospective clients whose email you have of a sale.
6. Ask for client referrals and by the same token you can ask for investment referrals.

Email marketing is great both on a large or small level. It is more cost effective and personal than any other way of marketing. You create a spiral effect through email because, even if the people you reach are not interested, they may know of someone who is.

A great many real estate investors do so as a part time activity, keeping their regular job or business for their life income requirements.  You’ve built a nest egg that is sufficient to begin a real estate investment business.  And, don’t ever forget, it’s a business whether part or full time.  Not operating your investing as a business will likely result in failure and a much smaller nest egg.

However, what if you’re in a position that provides the luxury of a full time or part time real estate investing business?  Which is best for you?  First, let’s just say that only a tiny percentage of investors have the resources of a Donald Trump.  This isn’t meant to be a discouraging article, but gaining and keeping the resources necessary to invest in real estate AND pay your life expenses can be a challenging proposition.

Even if you have been doing it part time, and you’ve been quite successful, if one or more of your properties experienced damage or other reasons for an extended period without rental income, how would it impact the other financial areas of your life.  Would it simply be a negative return on those properties, or would it cause you to borrow money to pay household bills?  You should never put yourself into a position where it no longer is “investing.”  If it is paying living expenses, you’ve taken on extra stress that can be detrimental in many ways.

On the same negative cash flow topic, you never want to be in a position of making daily decisions under financial stress.  Few humans can say that their decisions made under duress are as good as those made without stress.  Most will simply aggravate their situation, accelerating their financial problems.  If they are making lifestyle and daily living decisions under the stress of poor investment performance, the outcome is rarely a positive one.

One other argument for starting part time or remaining a part time real estate investor is the ability to extricate yourself from investing if your life or plans change.  If your entire income is tied up in investments, it can be very difficult and costly to end the activity if you have health problems or you must make changes in where or how you live. 

Notable exceptions to these cautions are retirees who have their living expenses covered by their pensions or other retirement investments.  If you have liquid assets that can be tied up in real estate investment, you may be able to make this a full time activity.  Just make sure that you  keep it aside as a stand-alone business.  If it were to experience difficulties, you do not want it to threaten your retirement resources.

The study also shows that about 50% of current home buyers look for daily convenience, and proximity to their work place. They are also going to focus on areas that have low property taxes. What has really changed? Homebuyers are not as interested as they were a few years ago in cultural and recreational amenities, but they are more interested in environmental features like energy saving appliances, and even solar heating.

Energy concerns have become a key element with today’s home buyers, and this may be because of the rising costs of energy. Almost half of those surveyed stated, that features like low usage water heaters, solar panels, and energy saving appliances were important to them.

Of course features that have always been important like, number of bedrooms, bathrooms, storage areas are just as important today as they were 5 and 10 years ago. The important thing to realize as a home seller is to understand what buyers are really looking for, so that you can fulfill their needs.

What Dean Graziosi is saying, is that the news is not so bad as it is made out to be. There are still home buyers out there, and there are great real estate deals out there too.  But focus on what is important to today’s generation and the market is still fair.

Even in today’s real estate market and probably in spite of the low real estate market, on of the best money management decisions you can make is to invest in real estate, at least this is what Dean Graziosi, real estate investor believes.

Even now in the real estate slump we have today, there seems to be a positive outlook for the future. Real estate will always increase in value over the long haul and there is no better time to invest than now, when the market is in a slump and sellers are offering all types of incentives.

Yes there are real estate investors who buy to flip a house in one or two years, but there are also investors that buy homes to sell in 10, 20 or 30 years, and use the money for their retirement. Some people even buy property for other large investment needs they might have in their lifetime like that of funding children’s educations.

The downward turn in the real estate market can be beneficial to you. In this type of market you can get a good deal or help from a seller, incentives, help with closing costs, etc. And in twenty or thirty years the real estate market is sure to have turned upward, letting you have a great return on you initial investment.

According to Dean Graziosi, you should ask yourself a few questions before starting on your real estate investing path to success.

• Figure out wh