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Why HOAs Should Consider Outsourcing Financial Management

Get Patients Back in the Chair: Hygiene Reactivation That Works

Why More Healthcare Providers Are Turning to BPO

Common Misconceptions About BPO and What You Need to Know

Adapting for Growth: Strategic Outsourcing in a Changing Market

How Business Process Outsourcing and Virtual Assistants Empower Companies to Meet Evolving Consumer Needs and Stay Competitive

Business Process Outsourcing Market Size | Industry Report

What Is a Shared Equity Mortgage? Top Pros and Cons

Buying a home is a huge financial decision. Purchasing one requires large sums of money. You also need to consider down payments and other upfront costs.

Not everybody can pay for all these themselves. You can spend tens of thousands of dollars on down payments alone.

This is where financing programs like shared equity mortgage comes in. But what exactly is it?

What is a shared equity mortgage and how does it work?

Shared equity mortgages are loans covering a percentage of the upfront costs of buying real estate. You can get this loan from non-profit organizations, local governments, or the private sector. 

The terms and conditions of the loan depend on the lender. Some require you to live in the home for a number of years before you can sell it. Others would implement a cap on how much you could sell the property for in the future.

This is done to ensure real estate prices in certain areas remain reasonable. It also helps low to minimum-wage earners secure homes.

Another term used for shared equity mortgage is “partnership mortgage”. Loan providers can act like a “silent partner” in your purchase. This should not be mistaken for home co-ownership or fractional ownership

Even if it’s a “shared mortgage”, it doesn’t mean you share it with someone else. The home you buy will belong to you. 

Instead, lenders can get a percentage share of the appreciated price when the property is sold. This percentage could be higher when loaning from private investors.

Here are some examples:

Shared Equity Mortgage Examples

One of the advantages of shared equity mortgages is that a loaner doesn’t have to pay the loan until they refinance the home or sell it. 

Let’s use this scenario as an example:

The total cost of the property is $300,000. You get a publicly funded shared equity mortgage worth $30,000. This equates to a 10% loan of the total price. The lender now has a 10% stake in future appreciation when the property is sold.

Here is another scenario using an example from a financing program in Austin called the Homebuyer Down Payment Assistance program. Residents can avail of a $40,000 silent second loan to secure down payments on a property. 

But the loan is limited to people buying a home with an appraisal value of less than or equal to $295,000. In addition, only residents within a certain wage bracket can avail of the loan. 

For this specific program, the household income needs to be less than 80% of Austin’s median income. The yearly income should also fall below $85,450 for a family of five.

Shared Equity Mortgage: Pros and Cons

There are several advantages to availing partnership mortgage. But before applying for a loan, you need to weigh both pros and cons.

Pros

More Accessible – Low-income earners gain access to affordable homes with the help of this loan. It can cover a large percentage of down payments and closing costs. 

Lowers Local Housing Rates – The benefits can also be seen beyond an individual level. Local housing rates in certain areas are moderated thanks to loan restrictions. This prevents people from selling homes at obscene prices.

Builds Finances – From a financial aspect, the loan also helps build your equity and saves you from costs related to Private Mortgage Insurance (PMI). 

Lowers Risks – This loan reduces the risks associated with buying property. If housing prices fall due to a weak real estate or short-term rental market, lenders also share your losses. You can then owe less than your initial loan. 

Cons

Lesser Profits – Homeowners get lesser profits because of selling caps or shared property appreciation. If you can’t find ways to offset these losses it could hinder your capability to grow your wealth. 

Higher Interest Rates – Having lower down payments because of the loan can also lead to higher interest rates, PMI, and other costs. Be sure to do your research and calculations before applying for a loan.

Limited Options – Your options are limited with shared equity mortgages. Not a lot of companies offer this type of service. This can force you into a “take it or leave it” situation. 

The loan is also offered to a select few that meet specific requirements. This makes it rare and hard to secure. So instead of buying a property outright, some invest in Real Estate Investment Trusts (REITs).

Difficult to secure – Local governments are also the best place to find such financial assistance programs. That means the offer is limited to the residents of those areas covered by cities or municipalities. If you make too much money, you may not even fit the criteria for a loan.

Should You Get a Shared Equity Mortgage?

If you’re planning on buying a home with the assistance of loans from shared equity mortgages, answer the following questions:

  • Are you buying a home for the first time?
  • Do you lack the down payment for closing costs for the home?
  • Have you considered the long-term costs associated with it?
  • Do you fit the criteria for the financial assistance program?
  • Are you willing to let go of a certain percentage of future appreciation?

If the answer to those is yes, then getting the loan may be a sound idea. There are workarounds to the cons and it can benefit communities altogether.

Key Takeaways

Shared equity mortgages provide better opportunities for low-income earners to secure homes for their families. It improves finances by building equity and allows easy access to cash, and funding for home projects, and can even help with retirement.

There are definitely a lot of upsides when it comes to this type of loan. But each individual has a different financial situation. So, do your research and consider the following:

  • Shared equity doesn’t need to be paid unless you sell or refinance a real estate property.
  • These mortgages have strict rules such as limiting selling prices and the people who can buy the home.
  • The goal of these loans is to make housing affordable in certain areas. 
  • It’s not easy getting approved for this type of mortgage.
  • There are several alternatives to shared equity mortgages.

Challenges Of Property Management & How To Solve Them

Property management firms can face a wide variety of challenges. Some are easy fixes, others could indicate more pressing issues.

Challenges Of Property Management & How To Solve Them

But as a rule of thumb, you want to solve these challenges as soon as possible to prevent underlying issues from getting bigger. Here’s an in-depth look at five critical problems in property management.

Stagnant ROI

One of the most pressing challenges property managers face is finding ways to increase ROI (return on investment). Investors spend money on real estate and expect good returns. If the ROI is stagnant, that means the business isn’t growing or losing to the competition.

Property managers are expected to use every tool they can to boost ROI. This includes outsourcing property management services, using automation, or implementing better marketing strategies.

But keep in mind that no two properties are the same. There won’t be a singular solution that solves this problem.

Instead, focus on the foundations of the business. Find the pain points and streamline business processes. For example, many firms invest in outsourcing to cut down operational costs.

This helps managers invest more money into dollar-productive activities rather than spend it on repetitive tasks such as back office work.

Changing Regulations

The legal framework governing the real estate sector is constantly changing and adding new laws and standards, sometimes with harsh penalties for breaking them. The requirement to stay current with these regulatory changes is challenging.

Effective and technologically based approaches must be used to remain on top of regulatory developments. Property managers may easily become overwhelmed by narrowing down what is pertinent to the property, yet disregarding these improvements might result in crippling fines.

It is advised to speak with firms offering legal and business support because these laws differ from one location to the next. In particular, evictions are a delicate legal matter that must be addressed by abiding by the law.

Property Maintenance

Providing an excellent tenant experience is one of the most important tasks of a property manager. However, managers can’t be expected to be on-call 24/7 whenever there’s an issue. This is the reason why many managers struggle.

Whenever there’s a leak, a broken bulb, or a fire alarm that was accidentally set off, property managers need to be there to address the issue. But this isn’t sustainable. Some of these issues happen after hours.

The key here is to leverage maintenance services that offer 24/7 support. Outsourcing can also help with monitoring tenant issues. Firms can set up their own call center for concerns and hire outsourced customer service reps to handle the issues.

Time Management

Property managers often wear many hats. Throughout the day, they can bounce around from one task to another ensuring there are no problems. This leaves no time for creating strategies that could help grow the business.

Stress can easily build up between emergency maintenance calls and administrative concerns. An easy solution for this is to outsource repetitive, non-dollar-productive tasks.

Managers can now have more time to do what they do best. They can set up more meetings and find better ways to increase ROI, marketing, and more.

Tenant Acquisition and Retention

Finding new tenants is difficult. Another issue is keeping tenants and making sure they’re in it for the long haul. This is where the tenant screening process comes in.

There should be a dedicated process that filters out potentially bad tenants. This can save money, and avoid issues like late rent, and other concerns.

To streamline the process, managers need to find a good marketing team that helps promote their rentals and overall business. Firms can also improve their online presence and authority through Search Engine Optimization (SEO).

If you’re ready to start your outsourcing journey, Global Strategic can help with your business needs and give you the Strategic Advantage needed to edge out the competition. Contact us today and learn more about how offshore outsourcing to the Philippines can help your business and future business growth.

Minimizing Outsourcing Risks In Property Management

Most businesses adore the concept of outsourcing. Three common causes account for the majority of it. Financial, operational, and logistical convenience are all assured by outsourcing.

Although outsourcing has many benefits, there are also risks involved. For instance, outsourcing does not result in the cost savings your company anticipates.

Alternatively, the service provider is unable to meet your company’s needs. Or perhaps they lack the personnel skills necessary to complete your essential work. The service’s quality can occasionally fall short of expectations.

The outsourcing business model is still upholding its reputation despite numerous concerns. There are numerous justifications for doing so.

How To Minimize the Risk Of Outsourcing

To assist you with your hiring needs, you can select a domestic or foreign outsourcing partner. But keep in mind that when you outsource, you give up a lot of information. For instance, operational data, private information, and other records.

Here are 8 ways you can stop these issues:

Sharing of Responsibilities

The technological nature of outsourcing necessitates thoughtful decision-making. You and the service provider have equal responsibility for the exact execution of the project, and both parties must work together to control the risks. In this manner, when something goes wrong, nobody can be held responsible or held accountable by either party.

Determine Quality Standards and KPIs

Any company’s growth depends critically on documentation. Before you want to begin operations, you must determine the parameters of your business. Additionally, it’s critical to use performance indicators to gauge successes and failures.

Establish timeframes, KPIs, and accomplishment benchmarks. Set and adhere to high standards for quality. This allows you to assess where things went wrong. When any indicator is violated, the offending party will be penalized. As a result, outsourcing failures can be reduced by careful investigation.

 Ensure Discretion and Privacy

In the contemporary corporate paradigm, secrecy is essential. Businesses are required to divulge their private data to service providers. A compromise of private information, however, can result in problems for your company.

Therefore, have your service provider sign a non-disclosure agreement. You can prevent the outsourcing company from disclosing your personal information in this way. To ensure the security of your data, you can also go to the service provider’s physical location.

Accomplish Business Goals

Make sure your outsourcing agreement reflects the particulars of your company strategy. Never use outsourcing as a means of obtaining cheap labor for your company.

With your service provider, you should clarify your expectations and plan out your company objectives. It might also help you reach your goals if you communicate your company goals and aims to your outsourcing partner.

Dialogue on Critical Concerns of Outsourcing

Having a discussion about the hazards is the first and most important step. All the problems that arise while using an outsourcing business are discussed and evaluated.

Create a firm model based on a commitment to the project’s success. The third-party outsourcing supplier and your organization must both shoulder equal accountability throughout.

How To Make Outsourcing More Effective?

You provide your secrets to a third-party service provider when you hire them. This private information may have an effect on your clients, shareholders, and exclusive business partners.

To ensure trust and dependability, you must therefore improve your outsourcing process. Here are the best techniques you can use to increase the effectiveness of outsourcing.

Look for Relevant Providers Only

Your organization must look for a dependable third-party service supplier. Therefore, look for all the pertinent profiles that fit your company’s needs. Cross-check their performance history and review the client list of successful outcomes they have delivered. Before contacting any service provider, take your time and consider all the positives and negatives.

Establish a Monitoring Team

You must always keep an eye on the service provider you have chosen to handle your outsourcing needs. Keep a close eye on their performance, especially while you’re in the experimental stage. Follow up on their accomplishments of the target and missed objectives on a regular basis. It is advised to have a senior employee on the monitoring team. You can easily evaluate and monitor service providers’ performance thanks to their unique experience.

Ensure Complete Documentation

There must be no gaps in the service level documentation. Nothing should be left unrecorded, and verbal agreements should be kept to a minimum. The paperwork needs to be thorough and cover every conceivable angle.

The obligation and accountability of both parties must be clearly defined in the treaty. Don’t forget that negligent outsourcing can result in legal disputes. As a result, make sure your company takes the necessary steps to guarantee a well-optimized process.

Conclusion

If you’re ready to start your outsourcing journey, Global Strategic can help with your business needs and give you the Strategic Advantage needed to edge out the competition. Contact us today and learn more about how offshore outsourcing to the Philippines can help your business and future business growth.

Outsourcing Challenges For Property Management

Firms have transitioned into remote working due to the pandemic. But even after the lockdown eased, many still adopted the model.

Businesses such as property management also tried outsourcing for cost efficiency and streamlined business process. Realizing the advantages, many invested heavily into it and already reaped the rewards.

However, outsourcing can still have its challenges, especially when it comes to Property Management.

In this article, we’ll discuss outsourcing challenges and strategies to prevent them so can reap outsourcing’s advantages.

7 Common Outsourcing Challenges Property Managers Are Facing

Successful firms outsource non-essential company functions to competent third-party service providers. But outsourcing has many challenges, and we’ll cover several solutions that may help you utilize it to its fullest potential.

Loss Of Control

At the beginning of outsourcing, firms often lose control over their project. Every organization must pass this step since their in-house staff previously handled it.

Communication and vendor location affect project control. Mismanagement of service providers might impair project quality since they won’t know your newest needs.

The solution: Before engaging an outsourcing partner for your firm, you might examine the organization’s client-handling experience and tracking strategy. Set meeting deadlines, measure KPIs and other indicators, and select a contact.

Communication Issues

Outsourcing to countries like the Philippines and India will result in massive operational cost savings. The issue with this comes in the form of language barriers and communication issues.

Due to cultural differences, tone, and accents, exchanging, there’s a high chance of miscommunication. Language and cultural limitations might hinder communication with your outsourcing vendor. Communication barriers are a typical outsourcing challenge that can reduce project quality.

The Solution: Set business hours to improve communication. Using good project management tools, you may standardize communication and define escalation processes.

Another quick tip is to outsource to a country like the Philippines that has a similar culture to the West and has a high English proficiency.

Hidden Costs

Outsourcing aims to acquire a competitive edge over in-house non-core business functions. Before picking a vendor, compare your in-house estimate to the vendor’s price.

Redeployment, troubleshooting, software updates, etc. are often overlooked. All these might add to your budget, causing problems later.

The Solution: To minimize outsourcing costs, contact the vendor and get a transparent cost estimate. Clearly outline the outsourced project requirements so the vendor can provide you with an accurate cost estimate.

Finding Trustworthy Service Providers

Successful foreign expansion requires a dependable outsourcing partner. Finding the appropriate outsourcing partner can be difficult. It’s a prevalent outsourcing problem since corporations don’t properly vet providers. Your outsourced job may be of poorer quality.

The Solution: Consider the firm’s expertise, number of projects and clients, average project size, ranking and reviews, access to the newest technology, etc. when choosing the suitable vendor. Companies’ lists vary. Before choosing an outsourcing partner, ask questions.

Language and Cultural Differences

Most organizations outsourcing confront cultural and linguistic challenges. Language and cultural hurdles prevent companies from outsourcing innovation and detail. Lack of research and communication causes cultural and language issues that affect outsourcing.

The Solution: Differences in organizational culture can only be resolved via conversation. Check if corporate employees speak English or your favorite language so you can communicate.

Different Time Zones

Time zone variations are a key offshore outsourcing challenge. Your outsourced partner’s time zone will be different. Even when your vendor isn’t available 24/7, you can contact someone else. A time zone graphic helps you choose the right outsourcing company.

The Solution: Frequent communication with your outsourcing provider helps reduce time zone discrepancies. Set a time for mutual project updates so both sides keep informed. You may also choose a 24/7 service provider for better communication and less time zone confusion.

Security and Privacy Concerns

Because outsourcing uses fully-remote teams, data security should be a top priority. When outsourcing back-office tasks for property management, an outsourcing team is likely to handle sensitive information about clients and their customers.

So choose an outsourcing provider that has ISO 27001:2013 or the data security standards. This ensures:

  • Confidentiality: ensuring that information is only accessible to those who are authorized to have access
  • Integrity: safeguarding the accuracy and completeness of information and processing methods
  • Availability: ensuring that authorized users have access to information and associated assets when required

Key Takeaways

If you’re ready to start your outsourcing journey, Global Strategic can help with your business needs and give you the Strategic Advantage needed to edge out the competition. Contact us today and learn more about how offshore outsourcing to the Philippines can help your business and future business growth.

Outsourcing Checklist: How To Get Started With Outsourcing

Outsourcing is the most effective way to streamline and grow any business. But, before considering outsourcing, you need to prepare a checklist to ensure things go smoothly.

According to an Outsource Accelerator study, India and the Philippines are the top countries for outsourcing. For India, the most outsourced services are IT and software development.

Outsourcing Checklist: How To Get Started With Outsourcing

Meanwhile, the Philippines leads with customer service and back-office-related outsourcing. With that said, here’s a checklist for businesses that want to start outsourcing:

Outsourcing Checklist

As mentioned above, the Philippines and India offer their own pros and cons when it comes to outsourcing. For this reason, there has been a long debate over the Philippines Vs India.

Outsource a Team That Understands Your Culture

Still, when it comes to back-office and customer service, the Philippines holds several advantages, especially in culture. The Philippines follows a more Westernized culture so they’re more likely to follow trends and references which make them more relatable.

English is also part of their education making Filipinos extremely proficient when it comes to English with most having no distinguishable regional accents. So, when planning to outsource, pick a service provider whose cultural background aligns with yours. This is important when it comes to customer service.

Outsource to a Provider That Tracks Performance

Consider the phrase “omnichannel” while looking for an offshore Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) provider. Omnichannel support means that a BPO can provide more than just customer or back-office support.

Anytime you need something from your provider, they should be able to reach you through multiple channels and promote a seamless experience between them. In addition, a BPO needs to be able to keep track of Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) to ensure productivity and efficiency.

Outsourcing Service Provider Should Offer Customized Support

A good BPO provider may use your current knowledge base to complete onboarding. They should help you automate while causing your customers no problems. Any difficulties should be handled quickly and reported on.

Every business has different set-ups so BPOs should provide solutions that fit your specific needs.

Outsource to a Company With Good HR & Recruitment

Thousands of applicants go to BPO companies everyday hoping for a chance to work with foreign clients. That’s why a good recruitment and hr team with a meticulous hiring process is needed to ensure the best applicants are offered an opportunity to shine.

Outsource To A BPO That Conducts Outsourcing Best Practices

Outsourcing reduces labor expenses. An effective business may save up to 70%, according to studies. This is a short- and long-term investment.

Following a first meeting, outsourcing businesses likely know what they can do. You must specify what you want from them.

To outsource a task, prepare a work plan. You’ll want to track milestones and deadlines. Time-tracking applications help. Your outsourcing partner should also offer a time tracker for full-time staff.

Following a negative encounter with a remote worker from another country, most companies decide to cease using freelancers entirely. This makes perfect sense, of course. Finding a reliable virtual assistant in the field of property management may be a time-consuming and expensive process.

When partnering with a BPO, you’ll have access to the heads of companies and managers, allowing you to build long-term connections with them. Reports have found that cooperative connections between managers are the key to the success of outsourcing projects.

This way, you may avoid stressing over absent VAs, broken equipment, and inadequate training. You now have access to the whole toolkit, workforce, and infrastructure that a BPO typically maintains. Therefore, it is practical to establish rapport with upper management in order to facilitate the resolution of any issues that may arise.

If you’re ready to start your outsourcing journey, Global Strategic can help with your business needs and give you the Strategic Advantage needed to edge out the competition. Contact us today and learn more about how offshore outsourcing to the Philippines can help your business and future business growth.