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 Quick Skim
Tax season may have just ended but you should already be thinking and preparing for next April’s tax bite. In fact, a little thinking ahead might save you hundreds of dollars or more. After all, you likely didn’t deduct everything that you could have in your last tax filing. CPA Bernard B. Kamoroff, author of 422 Tax Deductions for Businesses and Self-employed Individuals (Bell Springs Publishing, 2008), provides an alphabetical list of hundreds of tax deductions for small businesses, from the common to the obscure. You owe it to yourself to read this one.
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From the Book: 5 Ways to Save on Your Taxes
Kamoroff’s book features tax deductions available for small businesses, home businesses, self-employed individuals, and independent contractors. If you receive a 1099-MISC form, the IRS’s “miscellaneous income” form, this book is for you. Here are some ways he says you can save on next year’s taxes when it comes to business expenses.
1. Keep good records. Get a receipt for everything. Have a good filing system for these receipts and keep them for at least three years. Receipts are your best defense if the IRS ever audits you. No receipt? No worries. Make notes about your expenses, such as driving mileage, or keep a business diary on paper or electronically that logs these expenses. Good records kept throughout the year will be handy when you get ready to file. For example, a cell phone used 100 percent for business can be deducted fully but you need to keep detailed records on the cell phone usage, including time, place, and purpose of call. Here’s a shortcut: Cell phone companies can provide you with a detailed call-by-call list.
2. Educate yourself. You can’t deduct if you don’t know what to deduct. For example, did you know your NAR membership dues can be deducted? Dues and other expenses for business groups, professional organizations, and trade associations are deductible. Other business deductions: rental costs for billboards, car expenses due to business purposes, computers, decorating expenses, ATM fees, late charges (except for government penalties), your Web site maintenance and domain name fees, downloaded software, fees paid to rent mailing lists, coffee services, marketing expenses (except for entertainment, which is 50 percent deductible), office
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 Mortgage expert Tracey Rumsey, author of Saving the Deal (AMACOM, 2008), responds to your questions about how you can avoid potential transaction deal killers.
Q: What’s the most common deal killer in a transaction that you've seen in the mortgage business?
A: I'm seeing a lot of problems with home inspection issues, especially with the buyer's market environment we're in now. Buyer's are much more demanding when inventory is high. Sellers who don't want to comply are seeing buyer's walk away without a backward glance to move on to the next house. Real estate practitioners who prepare their sellers for this attitude and help them be proactive by offering them a pre-listing checklist of maintenance/repair items will come out ahead.
The ideal solution is to convince your seller to have a professional home inspector go though the home immediately so that issues can be addressed now. What a boost to the buyer's confidence in the property when they can view a report, and then be shown the repair items and how they were remedied. My favorite icing on the cake is when a practitioner offers, as part of the listing agreement, to pay for a home warranty for the buyer. The practitioner only pays when a sale is successful and the property becomes even more attractive in a competitive market.
Q: Can incentives that sellers are offering to buyers — such as buying down points on a mortgage or even adding other temptations — affect an appraisal later on?
A: Yes in some cases. Some costs, such as normal closing costs and prepaid items of the buyer, can be paid by the seller without affecting the appraisal (as long as they are within underwriting guidelines for that loan program). Contributions in excess of underwriting guidelines
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 Quick Skim
Your buyer found the perfect home. Your seller found the perfect buyer. Yet, as you near closing, all types of title, mortgage, appraisal, and home inspection problems can keep you from closing. Mortgage expert Tracey Rumsey has seen it happen all too often. In her new book, Saving the Deal (AMACOM, 2008), she offers tips on how to avoid these potential deal-killers that jeopardize or delay transactions. Home listing and homebuying checklists in the book offer you questions to ask your clients to make sure these problems don’t surface later on and cost you a sale.
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From the Book: 5 Common Deal Killers
Any number of pitfalls can arise during a transaction that prevent the buyer or seller from signing on the dotted line. In her book, Rumsey offers common scenarios she’s seen and how to overcome them. Here are five:
1. Title complications. The title is legal evidence of the ownership of the property and is crucial when trying to help your client buy or sell. But problems can arise when such issues as death, divorce, guardianship, and bankruptcy enter the picture. Review the title carefully — this goes for buyer’s agents too. Troubleshoot any potential title issues early on. Direct sellers to a real estate attorney to resolve any problems. And don’t just take the seller’s word when it comes to the title — look it up yourself. Most title companies offer access to a limited amount of title information through their Web sites.
2. Unrealistic equity expectations. Have a talk upfront about all of the costs of selling a home so that sellers don’t end up backing out at the last minute. Rumsey’s book offers a worksheet that you can walk through with your sellers to paint a realistic look at estimated final numbers on closing day. It takes into account such items as mortgage payoff, any mortgage prepayment penalties, sales commission, title insurance for buyers, closing and recording fees, and
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For those who've wondered why some people seem to always find success while you struggle to live paycheck to paycheck, author Robert Shemin has the answer. In his new book, How Come That Idiot’s Rich and I’m Not? (Crown Publishers, 2008), Shemin provides a roadmap to becoming what he calls a “Rich Idiot” and building your wealth. He talks from experience, having become a multimillionaire himself by the age of 30 and owning a real estate empire of more than 400 properties. His wealth strategy relies on purchasing real estate, investing in stocks and bonds, and building your own business.
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From the Book: 5 Ways to Increase Your Wealth
The key to achieving financial wealth first requires unlearning some of the things that have been holding you back, Shemin says. Here are a few:
1. Stop thinking too much. If you overanalyze and spend hours studying and creating complex charts to evaluate decisions, you risk becoming too set in your ways and unable to accept new ideas. In other words, “you’ve become too heavily invested in your own smartness,” Shemin says. By the time you’ve made a decision, the opportunity has disappeared. Instead, get the basic facts, verify those facts through others who’ve taken similar opportunities, trust your instincts, and then, most importantly, take action.
2. Throw away your long list of goals. Too many goals scatter your focus and energy, Shemin says. Instead, have one goal and pick activities to work toward it daily. “Setting too many goals is like taking aim with a shotgun,” Shemin writes. “Setting one goal is like taking aim with a laser beam.”
3. Get into debt. Good debt, that is — those assets that bring in more money than they cost. Good debt includes a loan to buy real estate or a loan to start your own business. Bad debt eliminate — debt on credit cards or that fancy car.
To help manage your cash flow and prevent bad debt, follow a budget, such as spending 30 percent on housing, 10 percent on transportation, 10 percent on insurance/medical, 15 percent
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