Pros and Cons of Renting Out Your Beach Home

Because Folly is the most popular beach in Charleston for vacationers, many home buyers choose this area for buying real estate as an investment. Especially if you're looking at buying a second home in Charleston, beach real estate in general may be a good option to consider. If you know that you'll only be staying in the home a portion of the year, why not place the home on a rental program to offset some of the costs of upkeep, insurance, and taxes? There are several good vacation rental agencies in the Folly Beach area that can handle the headache of finding renters and collecting the money. Out of Charleston's six beaches, Folly is the surest bet for good rental income, as it has more vacation rentals on average each year.

Pros

1) Potential income: Of all of Charleston's beaches, Folly brings in the most consistent income averages from year to year. Typically, a Folly Beach home used for vacation rentals will bring in around 70% to 80% of the overall cost of the property given that you put 20% down on the property. If the property that you are purchasing doesn't already have a good rental history, we can usually find similar properties to get some idea of what you can expect to earn in rental income.

2) Tax write offs: You can write off the expenses on any second home/rental investment up to the amount that you make in income from its rentals. This means that you can make the income virtually tax free, or another way to look at it is that the property will practically pay for itself.

3) Getting to spend time at Folly Beach: What other investment option allows you to lay out in the sun, swim in the ocean, or watch a sunset on your own porch? You certainly won't get as much enjoyment directly from stocks or CDs! You can set aside as much time as you want to spend at Folly for you and your family. Whether you want to be in the beach house for just a few weeks every summer or half the year, you can tell your rental agency exactly what dates you want the house reserved for your own enjoyment. You can even just rent the home out in the off season (and stay there yourself for the whole summer). However, renting just in the off season won't bring in the kind of income that you can get from the months of May to August, as these are the peak tourist months in Charleston.

Cons

1) Having to deal with renters: A good agency will take care of the headache, so be sure to talk with our local property management companies about what services they offer. There will still be some extra work on your side compared to not renting, but most people think that it's worth the time it takes to have the additional income. If you can afford to buy a beach vacation home and also keep it up on your own, that's wonderful! However, if you could use the extra income that renting out provides, this is certainly a good option for you to consider.

2) More wear and tear: You'll have to replace furniture, etc. more often because the house gets used more throughout the year. But even with replacements every so many years, renting the home should more than cover the replacement costs you'll pay. And, as an investment property, remember that you can write off furniture and other house needs on your taxes.

If you're looking for a full time residence (instead of a second home/investment property), Folly Beach is still an excellent choice for buying a home. Even if you never rent out your beach home, you'll still be indirectly benefiting from renters and investors who put such a large demand in the real estate market for Folly Beach homes.

Regardless of how you plan to use your Folly Beach home, be sure to talk with your Realtor to get statistics and estimates that pertain to the type of home you plan to buy!

On Lee's website, you can learn more about searchforcharlestonrealestate.com/folly-beach-real-estate.php Folly Beach real estate and search all searchformountpleasantrealestate.com Folly Beach SC real estate listings on the Charleston MLS!

Homecare - What You Should Know When Seeking In-Home Caregiver Services

If you are seeking homecare for an aging parent and have never done it before, here is what you need to know. First, you need to know what you need before you can make intelligent choices regarding the services you will be seeking. The basic questions you may want to have the answers to would be; "Why do you need homecare?", "How many hours of service do you need in a day/week?" "What involvement, if any, will the family have in caring for the individual?" "What are the special circumstances that are particular to your situation that needs to be conveyed to the agency/caregiver."And perhaps the question that is on everyone's mind..."What is the budget and how long can services be sustained on that budget?"

Once you have a good idea of what you need, you can start your search with some type of guideline. For instance, maybe your mother needs help around the house 3 days a week for 4 hours per day. You have a soft budget of $1000 a month, give or take. Knowing your sustainable budget is important as the need for homecare generally increases as the person ages. This is a fairly common scenario where many families enter into the field of homecare.

Where do you start your search? If you are like most people, your first stop will be to do some internet research. You may google "home care" or "care giver " in your particular area to get a list of agencies. With a good amount of research and calling around, you will find there is a wide range of agency services. An alternative to going through an agency is to independently hire a caregiver from classified ads or online from a website like craig's list. Or you can use a registry service which can assist with your search for a caregiver. We will discuss the primary advantages and disadvantages of these three methods of seeking homecare.

Direct Hire Caregivers

While direct hiring is probably the least expensive alternative in terms of money, choosing to hire caregivers directly will require the most time, effort and tolerance for risk.

Properly screening a caregiver and following up with references should take as little as a couple of days to as much as a week. This is the bare minimum that you would need in order to do your "homework" before hiring someone to care for your parent. Many people are more comfortable having several caregivers to interview before they choose who would be the best fit for their situation. Screening multiple caregivers, in person, would almost certainly take the full week to complete. If the initial caregiver is not a good fit or quits after being on the job a few weeks, you would need to start from the beginning. There are also tax reporting obligatons that must be followed to stay clear of IRS trouble. The primary advantage of hiring a caregiver privately is that of cost. The primary disadvantage is the risk and being completely responsible for issues that arise with caregivers. There is no professional support should something go awry.

Full service homecare agency

On the other side of the spectrum is a full service home care agency. Full service agencies are the employers for the caregivers that they offer to clients. A good agency will have a strict screening policy and run various criminal background and employment eligibility checks on their employees to reduce their own exposure. These caregivers are usually bonded by the agencies. Bonding can offer an advantage if you are worried about the risk of damages occurring during care or caregiver theft. Bonding and worker's compensation insurance adds significantly to the costs of care which is why full service agencies charge a premium for their service.

When considering how important bonding and insurance would be to you, keep in mind that homeowner's insurance can cover many of the same damages that bonding and insurance would cover. You should consult your insurance provider to find out the extent of your coverage under your home owner's policy. Full service agencies will take care of caregiver tax reporting, and might also be able to perform services like billing insurance, which may be useful if you have insurance that pays for homecare, but like bonding, also raises the cost of service.

One of the primary benefits of using a full service agency is speed. A well established agency should be able to send a representative to meet with you on the same day that you call. Some of the better agencies can have a prescreened caregiver delivered to your door on the same day for an interview. The turn-around time for a full service agency is its strong point. If you are in a hurry and can afford to have all of the amenities, full service agencies are a good choice. The primary disadvantage of the full service agency is that all the features, i.e. insurance billing, bonding, 24 hr support lines, etc are usually built into the cost of services whether you use them or not.

Registry Caregiver Agency

Last but not least there is a "hybrid" known as a registry agency. If you are concerned about the risks of direct hiring, but aren't willing to pay for features such as bonding or insurance billing, the registry agency may be a good fit for you.

Registry agencies offer a kind of middle ground between direct hiring, and full service agencies. The caregivers working with registry agencies are not employees of the agency, and instead are independent contractors. Registry agencies perform many of the same professional services as that of full service agencies, such as screening, interviewing and performing background checks on caregivers. Registry agencies may not offer the more expensive features that put full service agencies out of the price range of many people.

A good registry agency would have a quality assurance procedure to follow up with the clients to ensure that they are happy with the services on an ongoing basis. A great registry agency is able to facilitate a strong relationship between the client and the caregivers that they refer, ensuring that both are happy with the arrangement. Working with registry agencies, just like with a full service agency, you can have a resource to call when unexpected situations arise. The primary benefit of the registry agency model is that you get a professionally screened and checked caregiver without having to pay full professional agency prices. Some registry agencies can also provide payroll services to relieve you of the tax reporting burden to the IRS. The primary disadvantage of registry agencies is that they generally do not offer bonding and insurance for the caregivers that they refer.

The risks

On the issue of bonding and insurance, the incidence of occurances of theft and damage is generally very low for professionally screened and checked career caregivers. The vast majority of caregivers are honest people who understand that commiting an offense like stealing from a client can have devastating consequences on their future livelhood.

One insight that most people do not realize is that caregivers can be employed by multiple agencies at the same time. Generally speaking, agencies do not retain their caregivers when they don't have work available. No agency can afford to keep caregivers on the payroll when there are no clients to place them with. Therefore caregivers tend to "float" from agency to agency to private hire, wherever the work is available. It is common for a caregiver to work part time at two separate agencies, or even work as a private hire for one client and through an agency for another. Like the ocean tides, the high quality caregivers ebb and flow from the agencies as clients do.

You can find top quality caregivers through private hire, registry agencies, as well as full service agencies. Understanding this dynamic will help you to evaluate agencies and not fall for the "we have all the best caregivers" pitch. A good indicator of a quality caregiver is when they can reference multiple well known agencies that they have worked for. Each agency has their own screening process, and if a caregiver has passed the screening for several top agencies, you can feel a bit more at ease about their qualifications.

So now you have an idea of what is available in homecare. Pricing may differ in various parts of the country. In the San Francisco Bay Area, the prices generally range from $12 to $17 an hour for private hire caregivers, $17-$22 an hour for registry agencies, and $22 - $35 an hour for full service agencies.

To find out which method of hiring would work best for you, you must also consider some intangible factors.

1) The level of responsiveness.

2) The quality of communication.

3) What your feelings are regarding the overseeing and managing of caregivers.

You will just have to trust your gut when it comes to the intangibles. Like everything else, homecare requires a learning curve. Hopefully this article has reduced the time on your learning curve!

accreditedcaregivers.com San Francisco Home Care, provider, Accredited Care Givers specializes in elder care, adult care and senior services.

A Few Advancements Of Home Security

Most people want to feel like they can enjoy the safety of their own home, and are interested in finding out more about home security. There are many different types of systems from which to choose, and can include either wired or wireless operation. Let's take a closer look at some of the features, and some other details you can include to help ensure greater safety of your treasured possessions.

Even with alarm systems it is important for all of the doors to be of solid construction, and securely hinged. There should be deadbolt locks on all external doors, and find some other place to keep a spare key than under the door mat, or over the door sill. Too many movies have given those secrets and would be the first place a burglar might look.

Windows can be an easy entry site, especially if they are at a secluded area of your yard. There are products which can be placed inside the windows which are operated from inside the house. Glass is always easy to be broken, but some alarm switches can turn a window into a siren which the entire neighborhood can hear.

Never leaves tools laying around outside your home, especially those which can be used to help the burglars gain entry to your home. If you have a shop, or garage, with windows installed in the sides, consider hanging curtains, or boards, over them while you are not inside using the facility. This can help to prevent unlawful entry and safe guard your expensive tools.

Many people have fences installed around their property, and although these can help deter intruders, they are not fool proof. Setting any kind of booby trap is illegal, in most countries. Instead of installing such traps, use some motion detectors that can be carefully placed around the perimeter, and wired to activate an emergency call to local law enforcement agencies.

Some people think that all they need for security is a couple of good big dogs to bark at and ward off would be intruders. However, if you and your family are not at home, burglars will give your dogs poison. If you receive your mail through a slot in the front door, invest in a container that is designed to catch and seclude items which are dropped through the slot, so that your dogs can't get to it.

When maintaining routine lawn care, you should make a point of trimming back any bushes or small trees that can hide intruders from view. Whatever valuables you own are best kept out of sight, and not displayed where they can be seen from outside the house. External security lighting is well worth investigating as this can keep your dwelling sufficiently lit and deter intruders.

When considering the installation of a home security system, you might want to get one which has battery backup for those times when the electric power suffers and outage. It also ensures that the unit will continue to operate of the burglars cut the power lines. Once the system is installed, decide on a password that everyone in the family can remember, and then test it with the monitoring service.

Deciding which home security company to go with? alarmforcecomplaints.net Alarmforce complaints and alarmforcereview.org Alarmforce review can help you make your decision.

Nursing Home Background Checks

Nursing home background checks have become compulsory. An applicant seeking employment into a nursing home needs to undergo a series of background checks, which is carried out by the employer. These checks are carried out for the safety of the safety and well being of residents of nursing home. Laws and regulations passed have made such checks mandatory in many states in the US. According to the law, an applicant may refer to a person seeking employment in a nursing home, a present employee of a nursing home who seeks a promotion in the capacity or an individual referred by a provisional agency to a nursing home. Similarly, nursing home refers to supported living amenities, intermediate care amenities for people with mental retardation, vicinity group homes, family care homes and rest residential amenities.

The laws relating to the hiring of applicants have become extremely stringent with an increase in the rate of crime against the inhabitants of these nursing homes who often tend to be a soft target for such criminals. The law states that no employer who runs a nursing home or a management company or other business entity that commits to operate a nursing home may hire or employ any applicant without getting hold of a report of the person's entire criminal history record. This may be obtained from the State Bureau of Identification. Similarly no agency, comprising but not restricted to temporary employment agencies, may refer an applicant to a nursing home without obtaining a report of the person's entire criminal history record from the State Bureau of Identification. The employer must instantaneously dismiss any employee upon notification of the employee's conviction of any disqualifying crime. An employer who employs an applicant for without conducting suitable checks shall be subject to a civil penalty of not less than $1,000 or more than $5,000 for each violation.

A nursing home is a place where generally sick, aged or handicapped patients reside in order to receive adequate treatment. These patients tend to form easy prey for criminals who take advantage of their disability.

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Home Testing Kits Online - 5 Questions You Need to Ask

As the Internet empowers consumers to take charge of their health and their environment, the burden of knowledge and responsibility has also shifted from doctors and legislators to the individual. There is a tremendous variety of diagnostic tests that can be purchased online and used in the privacy of one's own home. This puts very powerful tool in the hands of the consumer. But, as they saying goes, "With great power comes great responsibility."

There are many different types of home testing kits on the market, but they fall broadly into two categories: medical and non-medical.

In the medical category, there are standard diagnostic tests for diabetes, high cholesterol, pregnancy, hormone levels, fertility and paternity. There are also tests for specific diseases such as STD's (sexually transmitted diseases) including HIV test kits.

Non-medical tests are usually for environmental factors such as water testing, mold, radon, pesticides and other contaminants.

Before you buy one of these tests, you need to ask yourself some important questions.

1. Why do I need this test? In the case of medical tests, privacy is often a major concern. Many of these tests are for conditions that are socially sensitive in nature. STD and paternity tests fall into this category. In other cases, you may not have the medical insurance to cover the kind of testing you need to track your medical condition. Cholesterol and blood sugar testing for example. So if privacy or lack of access are your primary concerns, online home testing kits may be a good solution for you. However, if you are simply curious, or concerned that you might have a serious health condition, I urge you to please see your doctor first.

2. Do I have the skills to follow the test instructions correctly? This is a tricky one to answer unless you have the test kit in front of you, but here are some guidelines. I call it the Ikea test. Are you the kind of person who follows detailed instructions well? If not, home testing may not be for you. If you don't do the tests exactly right, you might contaminate the sample and get a false positive or a false negative result. Either way, you will have wasted your money, leaving you falsely reassured, or worried for no reason. Take away? If all your Ikea projects all have parts left over, forget about home testing. Leave it to the professionals.

3. What are the ethical implications of this test? Another potential minefield here, but one you need to think about. Some of the most popular home test kits on the market are for illegal or illicit drug testing. You can now buy home drug tests for marijuana, cocaine, meth, heroin and other opiates. There are even tests for legal substances such as alcohol, nicotine (tobacco) and caffeine.

The ethical concern arises because if you are taking any of these drugs, you don't need a test to confirm it. So that leaves two possibilities. One: you want to test someone else such as a son, daughter, or spouse. Or two: you want to test yourself so you can pass a drug screen by your employer, school or other agency.

With the first, you obviously have a right to protect your children from the harm of illegal drugs. However, many of these tests have an invasive quality that may make it difficult to collect the sample from an unwilling participant. The most accurate form of drug testing is hair analysis but you need a sample of hair taken from near the skin. Other tests use urine or saliva sampling. There are spray tests that can indicate the presence of a drug but the link to actual usage is obviously weaker.

In the second case, you have to ask yourself if maybe it's time to seek additional counseling for substance abuse. If you're risking your employment or academic future to get high, that's a pretty steep price to pay - on top of the cost of the tests themselves. But if you're concerned that second hand smoke might show up on the drug screen, these inexpensive tests may be worth the price for peace of mind. Just don't inhale!

4. Do some tests have legal implications? Good question. In our litigious society, where lawyers line up like scalpers at a U2 concert to sue anyone for anything, some diagnostic tests could be seen as an infringement of rights. Some of the drug testing kits come to mind. However, paternity tests in particular need to be of the legally approved variety to be admitted into evidence. You need to make sure you choose the right paternity test or things will go wrong. Going cheap will cost you more than just your day in court.

5. How accurate are these tests? Accuracy depends on two factors: the accuracy of the test itself, and care taken by the person doing the test (see Question #2). Many of the home test kits on the market have inherent accuracy levels of greater than 99% if done properly. This is as good as most lab results. With human error the most common reason for inaccuracy, be sure to choose FDA approved tests that have been rated as easy to use for most consumers.

Summary: Home testing kits for either medical or non-medical tests can be a viable and inexpensive alternative to no testing at all. However, if you have the option of getting a professional to do the testing for you, especially for medical concerns, do that first. In cases where privacy is a major concern, home testing provides an excellent choice for the empowered consumer. Used carefully, with concern for proper procedure, these tests can provide peace of mind, or act as the basis for further testing. Always remember though, that no test is completely accurate. Multiple tests may be needed to confirm any result.

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New Ideas For Financing Your Home-Based Business

Well, here we find ourselves in the midst of one of the worst recessions in the history of the United States of America. Banks don't seem to be in the business of lending money anymore. Lending has been frozen for business owners who have had long standing lines of credit, individuals seeking mortgages and car loans.

So what's a home-based business owner to do if they want to start or expand their business?

There's plenty you can do without the assistance of a lending institution.

Start or work the business on a part-time basis. If you are still employed by someone else, hold on to your job as long as you can and determine how much money and time each week that you can devote to your business. Here are some ideas for assistance in working the business if you are employed full-time:

Hire a freelancer or part-time person to answer phone calls and emails or for any other task.
Solicit college students who are majoring in marketing to help you with marketing and public relations. To build your website, contact career colleges or schools and seek out students who are majoring in web design. The students may tackle your project for free as an internship or project.

If you have been self-employed full time and your finances are drying up, there are several avenues to pursue:

Apply for full-time jobs and if you are fortunate to get a full-time job, make sure you stay focused on why you went back to work - to help finance your business. Word of caution: make sure when you are at work, you are doing your employer's work and not your own. A dear friend of mine recently got fired for using the company email to advertise her business. Use the aforementioned ideas regarding freelancers, part-timers and college students to keep your business going.
Apply for part-time jobs and let your clients and customers know that the hours of your business have changed. With the economy being the way it is, not many people will question a reduction in your hours and as long as your customer service is great, a reduction in hours will not reflect poorly on your business.

Considering bartering with other entrepreneurs or solopreneurs. If you are a member of a social networking group, perform a search within the group for people who offer the service you need and are willing to barter in exchange for your expertise.

Let's say you are a copywriter but you either don't have the time or the skill to create a newsletter for your subscriber list on a weekly basis. Check within your group for a virtual assistant who lists newsletter management as one of his/her services. Contact the virtual assistant and explain that you are looking to barter their virtual assistant services for your copywriting services.

The thing to remember is that everyone is an expert at something (yes, even you) and it's time to use your expertise to get what you need.

Research federal grant and vendor opportunities to see if the service or product you offer is something the federal government will buy or, if your product is service is something that can enhance your community.

Many people don't realize that the service or product you offer just could be what the government would award you a grant for. For example, based on the current economic situation, many people are being laid off and if these individuals have been in a certain industry that didn't require technical skills, to get back to work, these people are going to need computer training, assistance with how to complete job applications, interview tips - the list is endless. So, as an example, if your company offers computer training to individuals, you would research federal government grants to see if a grant opportunity exists for displaced workers. The next step would be to form a nonprofit corporation and then begin to apply for grants.

There are three things you must remember about federal government grants:

You must carefully complete the grant application and give them everything they ask for in the grant application.
Federal grants are usually issued on the state level. In other words, you may have to apply through a state or local agency to get the federal grant.
You should never fall in the trap of buying into any federal grant funding scheme or scam. Do the research yourself and apply for the grant through either the federal government's website or the agency's website.

If you have done your market research, done all your homework and know you have a great viable business idea, you can also use your 401K as a means of starting your business.

Please feel free to use this article in your newsletter, e-zine or blog. However, the byline below must be included in its entirety.

Copyright Carmin Wharton, 2009
Home-based Business Expert
homebasedbizexpert.com homebasedbizexpert.com
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Entrepreneur Opportunities Online - Ezines Will Make a Star Out of Your Bank Account

For the entrepreneur who has good writing skills and is looking for an online business opportunity creating Ezines might be the ideal medium.

By now most all of us are very familiar with the word email; which stands for electronic mail and many of us receive our magazines via email too. At the same time in our email we get these nifty little one or two page emails that cover one subject or are sales brochures, these are perfect examples of what an Ezine is.

An Ezine is similar to a newsletter in that it covers basically one topic with several articles about one particular topic. For example if your Ezine was about turkey hunting you might have an article about making the best turkey calls, one about the best type of shotgun to buy followed by one about your favorite places to hunt. Interspersed in your Ezine would be advertising that you are either being paid a commission for or that advertises things you have for sale. This is a great way to market any EBooks you may have written on the subject.

Another successful Ezine is one that features a local business and keeps their customers up to date on the latest merchandise they are carrying or perhaps the next sale they have planned. These can become very popular as more businesses are collecting peoples emails for marketing purposes. There are other ways to get mailing lists but be careful and choose a reputable company to get your mailing list from, after all most people are sick of spam and do not even look at it, you want people to see your Ezine and read it.

In order to properly format your work into an Ezine you are going to need the appropriate software. There are many different programs available online for this, some are free others will cost you money. The free ones a generally ok for starting out but once you get your business off to a good start you should invest in a really good software package. The free ones usually only give you a few options whereas the ones you pay for offer you much more.

Getting started is not hard, if you already run a website then start by creating an Ezine and sending it to everyone that registers on your site. If you want to get local businesses to employ your services, create samples of what their Ezine would look like if they were to hire you to write them. Above all do not hesitate to approach all of the businesses in town as well as churches and civic organizations. Many churches and civic groups have a large membership that would love to receive a monthly Ezine letting them know what is coming in the next month.

As for how you make money with your Ezines if they are for your website then you will have to rely on advertising to make your money. If you are writing them for your local businesses then you will make money per copy or a predetermined rate for writing them. In the end with a little hard work you can turn writing Ezines into a very rewarding career that you can run in your home office.

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