In today’s context of the post globalized market oriented economy, one of the most significant changes can be noticed in the fact that there is a globally felt need for niche and specialization in every possible walk of life. This has resulted in a number of professions, business, industries as well as academic disciplines that were simply alien to the earlier generations. Property management is an example of such an industry or profession which has been among the fastest growing in the past few years. It is not only booming as a financial or economic sector but is also being taken up my numerous people across the globe as a serious academic stream and a career option.

Property management can be defined as a supervising and executive operation that involves any form of commercial or industrial or residential real estate business. In fact, one can say that it plays a similar role to any form of management in a business. Property Management also encompasses the organization and running of personal belongings of any kind, apparatus, tooling and material capital possessions which are acquired and utilized to construct, mend and finally the maintenance of the end item deliverables. Property Management includes the methods and procedures, systems and human resource needed to deal with the life span of all the obtained assets as mentioned before together with attainment, control, responsibility, preservation, use, and finally disposition.

Among the various and diverse roles expected to be played by the property management industry, the most significant is perhaps that of a liaison between the owner and/or the management agency or firm that is operating on the  behalf of the landlord and the resident. Acceptance of rent, giving response to as well as addressing issues of maintenance, along with provision of a buffer for the owners who desire to maintain a distance from their renter’s constituency are also jobs that are included into the list of duties to be performed under property management. In a similar manner to facility management, even Property management is all the time more made easy and possible by the computer aided facility management also known as CAFM.

Among the many aspects of this particular profession, certain significant and important ones include the management of the accounts and finance related issues of the real estate assets, besides participation in or initiating legal action, if such circumstances prevail, with the occupant or the contractors as well as the insurers and their agencies. However, in case of legal matters it has been seen that most of the times the jobs are delegated to professional lawyers and attorneys instead of being dealt head on by the management agencies themselves. In fact in most of the cases there is inevitably an attorney or two working under a designated property manager in a firm. But still in order to be efficient or successful as a property manager, one is expected to be up to date with applicable and valid municipal, district or provincial and laws and practices of the pertinent state.

The very mention of the term business inevitably conjures up an image involving a large no. of people, maybe entire communities of varying size, huge establishments, great levels of connectivity and communication, etc which amounts to a large scale of operations to be exact. However, there still lays, even among all these large and complex network of things, an almost unquestionable position of an individual in every business conceivable by human under the sky. He or she is none other than the entrepreneur concerned with the particular business in question.

An entrepreneur, which is a French language term, is defined as the person or the individual who is responsible for undertaking an endeavor of financial or commercial nature. Hence, the notion of entrepreneurship can be easily defined as an act of undertaking the endeavor or in other words being an entrepreneur can be termed as entrepreneurship. One of the primary differences between a regular financer and an entrepreneur is the fact that the later is responsible for bringing together various kinds of resources necessary for starting off a business and primarily channelize their effort in converting the innovative ideas into commercially viable products. In fact often these kinds of efforts from entrepreneurs may lead to the formation of new types of business organizations or may even play a significant role in reviving older and existing ones especially responding to a recognized prospect.

While the most conventional and traditional use of the term entrepreneurship has been in order to describe the starting of a new business which was also the most distinguished form, the term has undergone certain transformations in applications over the years. In fact recent developments reveal that the term has undergone extensions to the point of including even socio political significance of the activities which can be described as entrepreneurial. Interestingly, when such instances of entrepreneurial activities or efforts are noticed within a corporate organization instead of between the organization and the external public, it is generally termed as intra-preneurship. It typically consist of various innovations involving venturing into unchartered corporate territories such as starting off sister concerns, spin off organizations of bigger corporate houses, etc.

Considering the fact that business ventures depending on such a large number of factors of such unpredictable and diverse nature always face the threat of failure, one must realize that the notion of entrepreneurship is certainly easier said or written about than done. Encompassing a wide range of activities and thinking process depending on the kind of organization and business in question, entrepreneurship is certainly not an easy proposition to play around with. Adaptability and resourcefulness are qualities whose presence or absence can literally make or break a person as an entrepreneur. In recent years, entrepreneurship has succeeded in gaining considerable attention from various quarters of the financial sector. In fact there are now certain organizations which exist in order to support the prospective entrepreneurs and to encourage the particular mindset and popularize it as a concept among the overall population.

The way business operates in today’s world, it is needless to say that it encompasses a series of technical procedures, formalities and complicated paper works primarily as a result of the scale of things in the post globalized scenario. Hence, it is quite obvious that under such circumstances a business transaction will involve much more than a mere exchange of money or goods. This excess in most of the cases comes in the form of various documents among which the letter of credit is considered to be of supreme significance for a number of reasons.

Ideally a standardized form of the letter of credit can be defined as a document that any financial organization issues, generally in trade finance that normally vouches for undertaking a payment which is of irrevocable nature. A Letter of Credit is more commonly referred to as a LC for the regular purposes. It can even act as a source of a transactional payment implying the fact that an exporter of goods will be paid on redeeming the LC. In fact, international trade transactions involving a considerable amount of money is the area where a LC generally plays an important role where the buyer and the supplier both belong to two different countries.

Although there are various views regarding the origin of this particular term, the most convincing argument comes from the fact that “accreditation”, the French language term is the source of the English phrase “letter of credit”. Incidentally, even the French word is in turn derived from “accreditivus”, a Latin word that roughly means either faith or trust or reliance. Normally the process involving a Letter of Credit involves three distinctly separate parties. The first would certainly be the one who is entitled to receive the money in question and is known as the beneficiary. The other two parties are generally banks or financial organizations of which the beneficiary and the applicant are clients of. While the former is generally called as advising bank, the applicant’s bank is known as the issuing bank.

One of the most significant aspects about a LC is the fact that it is irrevocable which means that under no circumstances the terms and conditions stated there can be modified, revised, amended, altered or cancelled until and unless there was a prior agreement between the issuing bank and the beneficiary and the confirming bank regarding the inclusion of such a provision allowing to do so. In fact a LC often performs similar tasks during the course of an execution of a financial transaction as a traveler’s check or a Giro. Normally, for receiving a payment via a LC, a beneficiary has to produce a set of documents which must include the bill of lading documents, a commercial invoice and documents that prove the fact that the shipment had adequate insurance against any kind of threats such as any form of damage in transit or any kind of loss for that matter, which are however all open to negotiation.

Since the emergence of the notion of business from the historical times, sole proprietorship has certainly been one of the most accepted forms of ownership of businesses all over the world. Often referred to as simply proprietorship or a sole trader, sole proprietorship is a kind of a business structure where there is one single individual who is responsible for running the business and owning it as well. In other words, in sole proprietorship, there is no difference, in terms of legalities, between a business and its owner. While subjected to tax, all the profits made or losses incurred mount up to the owner alone.

Moreover in sole proprietorship, according to the definitions by economists, each and every asset belonging to the business are possessed by the individual owner and so are all of the debts of the business which automatically become his debts and thus he has to pay them from his private funds. Hence, it can be said that in terms of economics an owner in sole proprietorship form of business has what is known as unlimited liabilities. The whole idea of the “sole” arises from the fact that any notion of a partner in the business is totally absent. There is an interesting provision for a sole proprietor that allows him to carry on business under a trade name which can be different from his or her legal name and that he or she can even open a business account with a bank.

Among the several advantages of running a sole proprietorship business is the fact that these businesses are extremely simple and hassle free to start up. Compared to businesses with other forms of ownership, these involve fewer rules along with the fact that the owner has complete independence as far as business decisions are concerned. It has also been observed by experts that these businesses are not only easier to carry on with but are equally simple to terminate if necessary. Another significant point about this form of ownership is that the entire profits earned from the business go to the sole investor hence avoiding any kind of financial complications that may arise in the process. Moreover the owner or the sole proprietor generally has a fast decision making process as he doesn’t have any kind of opposition while going over the decision making procedure and the entire control of the business finally rests in his or her hands.

However, one must admit the fact that this form of ownership patter certainly has its share of drawbacks or disadvantages as well. One of the first things, which are common to all individuals planning to start a business, is that they normally face a number of difficulties while raising the necessary funds for the investment as he or she alone will be entirely responsible for all the liabilities. Moreover, paradoxically, in a sole proprietorship the risk involved keeps on getting bigger as the business becomes more and more successful in financial terms.

The modern day world is one of specialized entities in every aspect of life. Even the constitution of each and every nation underlines special areas and circumstances and in the process defines specialized laws to govern the functioning of those sectors and areas. Hence, the idea of the corporate law, even if it may be comparatively unfamiliar in the daily life of a common man, would not be altogether an alien one on the concept level. Also often referred to as company or corporations law, corporate law can be defined as the set of authorized rules governing the functioning of the most prevalent type of the current business enterprises. Various entities such as the stakeholders, creditors, board of directors as well as the consumers, the community, etc fall under the jurisdiction of corporate laws.

Corporate law belongs to the broader umbrella category of companies law which have a separate and uniquely distinct legal personality altogether. In other words, corporate law involves large scale businesses with limited or unlimited liability intended for its members or stakeholders, who are entitled to buy and sell their shares according to the board of directors and their consistency of performance. Generally corporate laws associate themselves with organizations which have official registration under the constitution of a sovereign nation state. However, all these often lead to a basic confusion regarding the very idea of a corporation which is identified by five essentially defining characteristics of an organization. These are separate legal identity, limited liability of the stockholders, existence of transferable shares, and delegation of the management staff and finally the concept of investor ownership.

As with every other notion, even the origin of corporate law or even the concept of corporate as a legally distinct and unique financial entity, is a highly debatable issue with a number of varying and diverse views, opinions and arguments. It is mostly said that in the ancient Greco Roman civilizations, there existed a certain set of entities which can be definitely compared with the idea of a company. However, the modern idea of corporate as we now know it is said to have emerged from an ancestry that dates back to the Second millennium. With the establishments of guilds in the medieval period, which had a set of well defined rules to be abided by the members of the guild, surfaced the notion of both the modern corporate as well as corporate laws. It was however England and Holland during the era of expanding their international trade relations via sea routes, who developed and expanded the forms of corporate organizations and the organizational laws. Through out the 18th and the 19th Century there have been a chain of debates, arguments and resultant developments in this area. The final one in this regard was the verdict passed by the House of Lords confirming the separate legal personality of the company in the celebrated Salomon v. Salomon & Co. case further stating that the liabilities of the organization were separate from its owners.

The fact that the entire world is experiencing a certain kind of an economic crisis is almost known to all. So is the fact that it has hit the Western world in a particularly appalling manner. Similarly, the piece of information that each and every kind of business, whether of small or large scale, has suffered and is suffering during the recession is also a bit of stale news. However, something that can really turn a lot of heads and raise lot eyebrows is the fact that even in this scenario; one sector that is booming in the present continuous tense is the Real Estate business.

The term “real estate” is in fact a legal one and used only in certain parts of the world such as UK, USA, Canada and Australia among a few others which includes land together with everything permanently affixed, like buildings, particularly possession that is fixed to the particular location in question. The set of legal codes and the regulatory rules governing this particular sector pertaining to issues such as commercial as well as residential real property dealings and belonging to a particular area of jurisdiction is known as Real Estate law. Real property is also a phrase which is more than often used in an exchangeable manner with real estate.

The phrase real estate is argued to have originated from the legal concept ‘real’ referring to being related to a thing as differentiated from an individual. Thus real estate would be, legally, a distinguished entity associated with real property, i.e. the land and everything affixed to it and completely distinct from the idea of personal property which would encompass things like money, clothes, tangible goods, etc. The earliest use of this particular term for legal purposes is said to have taken place in the year 1666, according to certain historical documents. There is however a piece of counter argument which states that the term ‘real’ has its roots in the word ‘royal’ and the associated notion of monarchy and the ownership of lands as well as landed property especially during the medieval ages. Nevertheless, the word “real” in “real property” has its origin in Latin synonym for “thing”.

The major development and growth in the real estate business or the Real Estate Boom as it is more popularly referred to as began with the developments in the area of private property ownership. Not only that purchase of real estate will require a considerable investment, but one of the primary reasons behind this aforementioned boom of this business is the fact that real estate has advanced into quite a few individual fields as an industry due to the fact that every package of land has its own share of distinct and unique traits. Moreover the real estate business has further branched itself out into diverse and niche areas including Professional valuation services which is professionally known as Appraisal, brokerages, Property management, net lease, relocation services, development and real estate investment and consultancy and construction among others.

Although the notion of a business actually originated from an extremely small scale individual oriented level, with time it has certainly blown out of proportions and has simply got as big as it gets. As a result, the concept of ownership has also grown comparatively more complicated than what it used to be. Now, they can certainly vary from region to region or for a number of other factors, but primarily for the purpose of academics and jurisdiction, business ownership has been categorized into certain broad umbrella like broad heads giving rise to the following forms.

• Sole Proprietorship – One of the most common and apparent form of ownership of a business, sole proprietorship is the concept of a single individual be the owner of the business owning the means of production. It is entirely upon his or her discretion as to whether he or she would be operating the business alone or would wish to employ subordinates to carry out certain jobs for the proprietor. While in this case the proprietor has complete claim over the profits made in the business which is certainly an advantage, he or she on the other hand also has to consider personal liability for each and every kind of debts sustained by the business.
• Partnership – The very basic idea of partner ship in business actually arises from the need to override the disadvantage of shouldering the burden of liabilities in sole proprietorship. Generally in this particular category, more than a single individual channelize their efforts together in order to earn a profit. This idea of operating all together keeping in mind a common destination or goal forms the essence of partnership form of business. Here, mostly, each of the individual partners has got his or her share of liabilities for the various kinds of debts associated with the business. Typically, partnership can be classified further into three categories called general, limited and limited liability partnerships.
• Corporation – This idea of business ownership can be best understood in terms of maintaining a distance between the owners and the business itself. A corporation can be defined as a legal entity distinctly separate from the member of staff and the shareholders of the company. In fact as a legal entity it has limited liability giving the owners a whole array of advantages. Interestingly, according to the provisions of the corporate law, the organization of a corporation can be done both for a profit as well as not-for-profit motive. Since a corporation is technically possessed by a large number of shareholders, the operation is presided over by a board of directors in charge of employing the managerial staff.
• Cooperative – This is also an entity which has limited liability which can be again organized for both of the aforementioned motives. However, a co-op, as it is commonly referred to as, consists of members as opposed to share holders who have the authority to make decisions about the business policy in this case.

While talking in general terms, one often tends to use the word business in such a totalitarian and homogeneous way that it may be often quite misleading. The fact remains that not only can a business be organized in several ways; there exists a set of factors which contribute substantially and individually as to the manner in which the business is organized. Certain significant ones among them are:-

• The dimension and extent of the business along with its expected administration, managerial supervision and finally the notion of ownership. While the bigger businesses are in most of the cases structured as partnerships or (more usually) corporations as they have a wider ownership or further strict and inflexible organization, a small scale business is definitely more flexible. Moreover, a business that wants to raise capital or funds on a stock market or wishes to be in the possession of a larger group of people may be required, in more than often cases, to be approved through a particular legal document for doing so.
• The area and the location which can be, in other words, described as the sector and the specific location. The privately owned businesses governed by a profit motive are quite unlike the businesses that are owned by the government. In fact, in certain countries, there are few businesses which are constitutionally obliged so as to be structured in particular ways.
• The notion of limited liability. Conglomerates and companies, limited liability partnerships, along with other precise forms of business organizations often tend to shield their owner or group of owners from the risk or threat of failure of business by adopting an effective method of carrying on the business underneath a distinct and separate legal unit that is being provided with some particular legal fortifications. On the other hand, businesses which are unincorporated or a body comprising of individuals who are working on their own are more often than not devoid of the aforementioned sense of protection and safeguarding.
• Certain advantageous provisions related to taxation. Various organizations in fact receive completely varying and different treatments regarding tax laws from the concerned authorities or the government bodies, and may actually end up in an advantageous or disadvantageous position owing to reason.
• The various requirements for conformity and disclosure. Various kinds of business organizations can be needed under different circumstances to make announcements to the public or present a statement to pertinent authorities more or less information along with the fact that they may be compelled to meet the terms with several diverse rules and regulations.

It has been seen that several businesses are actually operated via a different unit including corporation, limited liability Company among others. The majority of these legal jurisdictions let individuals to organize such entities or units by clearing certain forms and abiding by certain rules, terms and conditions set by the concerned. The rights of stockholders, partners, or even the members are administrated by the charter papers and law of jurisdiction to which the organization belongs.

In  crucial times, it would be challenge form keeping your team on track and to perform at their best continually. Finally, we all are human beings and the word surrounded is becoming negative, we can easily feeling like falling into negative thinking. But, you can not afford having a team of people around you who are negative. Your team is needed to be stayed motivated, sharp, excited, and on track. There are few team pitfalls  to be wary for and few tips on how you can keep your team motivated.

If your team is experiencing some success, it is a “good enough” syndrome. In this some wins or they think  they have accomplished as much as offered the recent financial conditions, and they start to sit back and coast. What is significant, first is to completely  concede your team for its accomplishments. Confirm that they actually getting your communication regarding the fantastic job they have done up to now. Second, have a conversation with your team and assist them for refocusing your company’s business plan and principle or mission statement. Ask your team members for their view of fulfilling the business plan and to further the reason of company for being.  Afterwards ask them to recommit!

If your team is losing its target, sometimes the quality of its work slows down or its production goes down even more as team members are busy with blaming outside factors for the results they are getting. For this behavior of your team antidote is a review of what is a meaning of being accountable. In the past at some moment, team members agreed for allowing you to hold them accountable. Now its the time to do that. Confirm that they understand the influence on the company at the time team ignores it’s accountability. Ask them to recommit for being accountable in the future. Say something that ends the issue and  reinstates the relationship with every member.

If any of the team member is going through personal or any other problems, at times the remaining team members utilize those circumstances like  defense for them to end performance, too.  In this case, team members require remind their power, their power of producing results, even if any of their colleague team member is not causative. As well as they should be reminded  about their power to choose too, that they can choose for giving as much effort as they determine to give.

Spend some time over thinking  about your team and the way it performs. It is not   sensible to assume that your team will be performing at its best all the time, as in case it is on auto pilot. Be sensitive and proactive to what is happening to your team. Being a good mentor or coach for your own team is a pert of being a leader. Hence, check in with the team of yours, today only!

Whether or not you get your promotion, you need to know how to respond to the situation. If it’s offered, there’s a whole new deal to negotiate. And if it’s turned down, you still want to salvage something from the exercise and set yourself up for the next opportunity.

… and the pay rise?

You have every chance of winning your promotion. And what about the pay rise that goes with it? When you’re offered the job, you will almost certainly be offered a pay increase to accompany it. This increase will be negotiable, but let me offer you a word of caution. The pay rise may be well below the level you were hoping for. If this is the case, be prepared to accept it without too much argument. In other words, ask for what you feel you deserve, but set your bottom line lower than you might be tempted to. Your employers may have good reason for believing your salary should be lower than you believe it should be:

•    Inevitably, they are taking a gamble moving you into a job with more responsibility than you have been used to.
•    You may be expecting the salary your predecessor was on for doing the same job. But your predecessor had experience that you haven’t yet gained. They may have started the job on a much lower salary than they left it on, and your employers will equate your value more closely with the starting salary than the leaving salary.
•    By promoting you, your boss has automatically given you some degree of pay increase. But they have also transferred you on to a new ladder where your potential has increased considerably: you could end up earning more in this job than you ever could have done in the previous one. This potential for earning more has a value in itself, which you should calculate into your overall compensation package – your boss is certainly taking it into account. And they will know that if they start you too high they will be boosting this potential even further.

Luck or Value?
Your boss may take the line that, ‘You’re lucky to get this new job. Don’t push it by asking for too much.’ This implication that they are doing you a favor is unfair, so don’t stand for it. They offered you this job because it suited them to have you do it. If they come out with this line, tell them, ‘I thought you offered me this job because I would be valuable to the organization. Negotiating my salary is a way of establishing what that value is. I believe I will be more valuable than you perhaps think.’

If your salary is negotiated down further than you had hoped in this new job, let your boss know that you intend your pay to increase quickly: ‘I recognize that you feel there’s an element of risk in appointing anyone new to a job. But I hope that as soon as I’ve proved my ability to do it we can review my salary with a view to raising it to reflect my value to the company.’

If you are very dissatisfied with the level of pay you’re being offered, it is still worth taking the best you can get at this stage. Get your foot in the door (or your feet under the desk) and once you’re in the job your bargaining power will increase. But in the meantime you can aim to:

•    Agree a specific date for a salary review in, say, four or six months’ time.
•    Negotiate a performance-related element of your pay.
•    Agree a specific rise in response to a specific target. For example, if you successfully resolve the current overtime problems within two months, you will get a specified salary increase from the beginning of July.

All of these options (and you may think of others) are a way of saying that you believe you are worth more than your boss is prepared to commit to. So let them give you a chance to prove your value first, with an undertaking that if you are as good as you promise, you will be rewarded in the relatively short term. The options also give you a justification for seeking a pay rise very soon after your salary has been set.

As well as seeking a salary increase, you also have a chance to renegotiate your whole package. As we’ve seen before, you might well be able to justify a company car to go with this new job, or a bigger office. And should you get childcare allowance or a better level of health insurance too? Be realistic – ask for what you can justify, as always – but don’t miss out on any opportunities for developing the whole package.

If you are being offered substantially less than you clearly feel you deserve, this might at least be a good time to ask your boss to reward you in other ways. If they’ve just said no to a reasonable request for another £2000 a year, they’ll find it that much harder to say no to a car, a home computer or a private office as well.

Know Where You’re Going
Make sure you have a detailed meeting with your boss to establish exactly what your objectives are in this new job, and where your priorities should lie. This will enable you to direct your energies towards adding as much value as possible, as quickly as possible. And this, in turn, means you can justify asking for your next pay rise all the sooner.