Property management is an important thing when it comes to making sure that your property maintains its upkeep. Because it’s a manager’s oversight of the property on the owner’s behalf, a manager is often the point person in charge handling a variety of real estate.

Whether that piece of real estate is an apartment, a home, or a commercial building, getting in touch with a managing agent can be especially beneficial for your property in Singapore because of the wide variety of services they can offer. Here they are for your consideration:

1. Tenant Services

Managing agents are always on hand to act as a liaison between you and the tenants, as well as a contact that tenants can get in touch with in case of an emergency.

They also have a system of screening potential clients, which helps a lot to minimize any accusations of discrimination. They can even filter out the best tenants that can not only pay for longer, but also pay on time and are less likely to cause any problems with your property.

Aside from screening for tenants, managing agents can also set the initial rent level (which depends mostly on how much certain units of the property need to be priced in order to recover the investment and continue making a profit), they can also collect and adjust the rent in your absence.

A managing agent can also make sure that the property is marketed to as wide a tenant base as possible. When combined with their selective screening based on tenant capacity to pay rent, you can make sure that your property is always turning in a profit even if you’re not personally there to oversee everything yourself.

2. Facility Management

This includes all residential property maintenance that your unit might need to ensure that it will continue to provide a steady profit for you. A condo property manager in Singapore will take care of private housing facilities and ensure that your property will remain in its best condition to preserve its value.

Whether they are personally in charge of estate maintenance or hiring a third-party estate maintenance service, managing agents are more than capable of making sure your property is in peak condition.

Because of this, they often have large networks of reliable third-party agencies who can do the job, as well as a broad range of supplies and suppliers to keep the process of maintaining the property as smooth and streamlined as possible, ranging from management, to marketing, to even grounds control and outdoor and pool accessories.

3. Property Marketing

Good maintenance and an intensive screening for potential clients both play a huge part when it comes to marketing the property to future tenants.

Marketing is essentially advertising your property to prospective clients, and managing agents understand well that creating ads as well as working with other realtors is the best way to net in a client.

It also includes providing tenants with legal rental applications that comply with Singapore’s housing laws as well as collecting them with the rental fee. Providing contacts to get in touch with prospects for house viewings and questions is also part of marketing.

If you have real estate in Singapore, appointing a managing agent from http://www.estateinfo.sg/ to handle facilities upkeep is a must-do, especially if you’re planning on marketing it.

4. Financial Management

The upkeep of real estate is one of the most crucial things you need to keep your eyes on, as well as the detailing of budget plans as well as establishing and keeping existing records, such as income, expenses, and the cost of maintenance and repair.

Keeping a detailed record on both income and expenses gives you a concrete indicator on whether the property is still profitable, and whether you should sell it or continue to maintain and lease it. While you can do this on your own, this can be quite time-consuming.  

Hiring a financial managing agent for your property in Singapore can do a lot to help you not just with making a profit for your real estate, but also to make sure that your property increases in value over time.

5. Risk Management

Real estate is a huge investment, and assessing the risk that comes with any investment – particularly real estate – is a critical component of managing real estate. Risk management often involves extensive record-keeping with the property’s upkeep and needs an experienced professional to be able to handle the work.

For instance, condominiums often need a condo manager for the purpose of assessing how viable the property is in terms of generating steady income. Aside from examining the condo’s upkeep, the manager also has to look at the surrounding area.

Rental properties can be especially risky for properties that are a little far from amenities and with a considerable amount of travel time to get to the city, which results in a smaller pool of tenants.

Managing agents have to be aware of this, and are often equipped with the skills needed to make sure that it continues to generate income.

Even though these could all be handled on your own, there are plenty of reasons why you should simply let a managing agent take care of the property on your behalf. Often, these reasons will be not having enoughtime or the expertise to handle these factors.

The good news is that with a professional property management agent, this will not be a problem. Be sure to contact one for your property as soon as possible.  

Small and mid-sized businesses in Singapore are now steering away from traditional telecom providers in record numbers, with each of them hoping to take advantage of the cost saving capabilities of Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) while leveraging the calling features it provides. But with the potential for great return being this high, it has become easy to get caught up in the hype, rush into making decisions, and end up settling with a less than capable VoIP provider. To help mitigate the risk and ensure that you reap the maximum benefits of this phone service, we listed down some hiring mistakes you should avoid as you start searching for your VoIP service provider.

1. Disregarding How the Technology Works
Before you proceed in choosing a VoIP provider for your business, you should first ensure that you understand how the VoIP technology works. You don’t need to become an expert on the VoIP technology, but learning the basics – such as knowing how it functions – will certainly help you avoid the pitfalls that some providers might not disclose.

2. Failing to Learn About the Hidden Charges
Although VoIP in Singapore are inexpensive, have the initiative to go one step farther than the price you see on the provider’s website as there might be some hidden charges like its licensing, support and usage. For instance, you might notice a great price on the unlimited calling on your prospective provider’s website, but in the brochure it might state that the price doesn’t actually include calls made outside of their network. If this is case, inform your prospective VoIP provider beforehand to include both local and international calls in their unlimited call plans.

3. Hiring a Flagship VoIP Provider
If the provider that you are planning to hire is new to the VoIP industry, then it’s possible that they are using your business as a test subject. While this isn’t true to all new VoIP providers, it’s crucial that you find and hire someone who knows their craft and has been in the industry for quite some time. After all, you wouldn’t want to hire someone who will disappear on the fly, or worse, leave you with a system that will cause you a lot of headaches later on.

For that reason, ensure that you spend some time learning about your prospective hosted pbx solution offered in Singapore as this investment will surely return to you tenfold. Browse through local hosted pbx providers to cater to your business needs.

4. Choosing Someone Who Won’t Consider Bandwidth and Traffic
When implementing a VoIP service in your business in Singapore, it’s crucial to remember that your phone calls will be transmitted over your internet connection. Depending on the type of connection that you have, the upload capacity of your VoIP might be limited. If you have a large amount of data and voice, you might not have enough bandwidth to effectively use your VoIP service. The end result will be an unreliable VoIP connection and issues with data transmission using your internet connection.

To keep this from happening, ensure that you provider knows and listens to your needs. It would also be a good idea to get feedbacks from the people who previously hired your prospective provider so you will have an idea as to how the service works.

5. Forgetting to Ask About any Necessary Licenses
Using a VoIP on your home computer is relatively easy – you simply choose a provider, pay your monthly fee, and download the necessary software interface. However, it doesn’t work this way when it comes to using the services for your business, as most providers use licensing to lock their clients in. These VoIP in Singapore also use great value telecom services to hide licensing, making their offer look better until you are already locked in. To keep this from happening, inquire about any possible licenses that they have before you sign on the dotted line.

6. Failing to Ask About Their Disaster Recovery Plan
One of the first questions you should be asking your prospective VoIP provider is whether or not they have a plan in place for disaster recovery. Failing to do so will likely leave you stranded in case a system failure occurs. So don’t assume that your VoIP provider will automatically provide disaster recovery services to your business. Instead, ensure beforehand if these services are actually offered or not.

7. Neglecting the Features Offered by the Provider
While some of the phone services you need for your business seems like a “no brainer”, you will be surprised at how many VoIP providers in Singapore actually leave out some basic services like call forwarding. So instead of relying that all the services you want are already provide, require your provider to perform a demonstration so you fully understand what is being offered in the plan you are planning to get. Doing this will certainly help in avoiding negative surprises that might adversely affect your business later on.

8. Forgetting to Perform a Network Test
Some VoIP in Singapore will not bother evaluating your existing network to see if it’s capable of handling the VoIP system that you need. If your prospective VoIP provider is one of those teams, simply ask them about it. If things start becoming sketchy as they answer, do yourself and your business a favour and move on the next VoIP on your list.

With the hype in the VoIP system these days, it’s quite easy to end up hiring an incompetent and inexperienced provider. To keep that from happening, ensure that you avoid committing these mistakes when choosing a VoIP provider. Make sure that you are hiring someone who’s offering a reliable technical support and system maintenance. After all, this is an area of your business you would not want to cut corners, as it could spell disaster if you do.

The host of private investigator services go beyond surveillance and looking for missing persons. In fact, there are five general types of private investigators working in general, legal, corporate, cyber, and compensation investigation.

Let’s break down the qualifications, qualities, and responsibilities of a private investigator below.

Qualifications of a Private Investigator
A private investigator in Singapore must undergo special training and licensing in order to work for a PI firm. If you are in need of private investigator services, look for the following:

1. Background in criminal and civil law
2. Completed a private investigator training
3. Obtained a private investigator license
4. Passed the performance module
5. Obtained WOSQ or workforce skill qualification
6. Affiliation or membership with a private investigator services firm in Singapore
7. Good reviews or recommendations

Obtaining a private investigator license in Singapore is difficult because the applicant must not only be physical-fit and familiar with the laws but must also have the necessary skills required for a successful investigation. A PI must therefore have skills in evidence-gathering, interviewing and questioning, surveillance, gathering of electronic data, reasoning, and handling evidence for legal proceedings.

Qualities of a Private Investigator
Although the qualifications are foremost when looking for a PI in Singapore, there are other skills that he/she must possess which cannot be learned through training alone. Experience in similar cases is also important especially if the issue involved delicate information such as child custody and spouse infidelity or when you need evidence to catch cheating spouse as grounds for divorce.

A competent private investigator is not just a highly-skilled and intelligent professional, but must also possess the following qualities: good listener, effective speaker especially when dealing with interviews and interrogations, honest, confident, observant and pays attention to details, patient and persistent even when the case is difficult, creative when approaching a case at different angles, high level of integrity especially when the case is personal and confidential, team-player especially in cases that need cooperation with other private investigators, and passionate.

The job of a private investigator in Singapore is not like any regular job because they sometimes have to work more than eight hours a day, use weekends and holidays for investigation, and work in potentially dangerous situations and with suspicious people.

Responsibilities of a Private Investigator
A PI’s primary duty is to gather evidence to solve a client’s case. The type of evidence and the consequences of gathering quality evidence determines how the private investigator goes about his/her task. The approach taken when collecting data and analyzing the evidence will also depend whether the employer is a private citizen, or a party connected to law enforcement and the legal system.

For clients in Singapore that are not affiliated to the legal or enforcement system, such as gathering evidence to catch cheating spouse or for child custody, there are limits to what a private investigator can and cannot do. Some examples of such cases include missing persons, infidelity, background check, and records or documents retrieval. In cases that involve the legal system, the PI usually works with other investigators to create quality evidence for presentation in formal proceedings. These cases usually involve accounting or law firms, government agencies, businesses and corporations, insurance companies, and law enforcement agencies. A PI who can be hired to perform various investigations are sometimes called general investigators, while others specialize in some areas such as corporate, legal, cyber, criminal, and other investigations.

Regardless of their specialty, all members of the private investigator services are expected to perform the following responsibilities: gather quality evidence or data for the client, determine the best course of action for collecting the data, perform the necessary tasks to gather evidence, offer private investigator services to the client that might be crucial to the case, update the client about the progress of the investigation, consolidating and analyzing data for presentation to the client, uphold accuracy and honesty when gathering and presenting data or evidence, familiarity with the laws and techniques for data-gathering and analysis, and swear confidentiality and secrecy when disclosing information to other parties.

Types of Investigations
Some of the most common types of private investigators in Singapore investigate the following cases:

1. Infidelity. Look for a PI who specializes in this if you need to catch cheating spouse or you want to gather quality evidence for divorce proceedings. The task of the private investigator is to establish whether the hunch of a cheating spouse is unfounded or not.
2. Domestic. Besides hiring a private investigator for marital infidelity, other domestic cases are also handled by the PI because law enforcement usually does not want to pry into private business of families unless it is criminal in nature. Some examples of domestic investigation may include physical abuse, sexual abuse, child neglect or abuse, surveillance, searching for records, security checks, drug abuse, and child custody visits.
3. Accident or Insurance. A PI is sometimes hired by an insurance company in Singapore to verify claims of some of the clients, not because they are suspicious, but because some individuals tend to exaggerate the details or lie about the information provided. Accident reconstruction is also important when determining the exact location, cause, and other related details in the event. This will also help determine the liabilities of the parties involved and may serve as evidence in case there is a court proceeding.
4. Background Checks. A private investigator can perform routine background checks than most professionals because they have more resources and contacts. The investigation involves looking into the person’s history, professional background, debts and financial standing, and other related data.
5. Corporate and Fraud. A PI can be hired to look into the legitimacy of contracts, business proposals, projects, partnerships, and mergers to avoid financial loss and damage to the reputation of the company.