Buying A Home: A Real Estate Guide by GO-Estates.com Buying a home can be one of the most important decisions of your life. If you plan correctly and decide pragmatically, buying a home will be a pleasurable activity; if not, then you may be saddled with a home you do not want to live in.

Advantages of owning a home:-
Owning a home brings with it many advantages. Some of these advantages are:

• If you own real estate, your financial credibility goes up considerably in society.
• Your own home gives you the freedom to do what you like with it. For example, you can paint walls, keep pets and do many other things that you may not be able or willing to do in a rented apartment/villa/house. Remember, you can carry out any kind of home improvements in your own home, whereas you will not be willing to improve upon a rented home.
• Investment in real estate always appreciates with time. One of the main reasons for the appreciation is that there are far too many people and our world and far too less built space available to accommodate them. The market value of your real estate may bring you windfall gains in case you decide to sell it at a later date. Plus, owning a home will guard you against real-estate inflation.
• Owning a piece of real estate in any form secures you emotionally – Your home-ownership will fill you with pride and satisfaction.
• Over and above all these, you may enjoy some tax advantages because you own a home.
  
  Searching for a home:-
  
  Before you start your search for a home, you must at least make up your mind about the neighborhood you want to live in. If you’re migrating, then you must choose a neighborhood that is close to your workplace or your child/s’ schools. There are so many different factors that can influence your choice and ultimately it all depends upon you. Once you make up your mind where you’d like your real estate to be located, here’s what you must do:

• Always look up real estate online classified listings on real estate portals first. The online classified ads on the Internet cover a vast area and real estate portals such as ours’ – www.GO-Globe.com – cover numerous localities in different countries. You can try out niche neighborhood online classified ads too by running up a search on your favorite search engine. These online classified ads will not only give you an idea of the real market value in an area, they may land you with a super deal. On web portals, you can see the pictures of the property and you can figure out their location in a jiffy because the map will be given – this feature is missing in newspapers.
• Newspaper ads are a good source of information and many newspapers publish property pullouts or supplements, which clue you on to registration fees, taxes, mortgages, etc.
• Plan your finances well in advance. If you’re taking a loan, choose your preferred lender beforehand.
• Next in line are real estate brokers. If you run a scan on the Internet you will most likely find a reputed real estate broker who has published his listings online. Contact him and dig for more information.
• Now make a list about things to ask when you actually establish telephonic or Internet

contact: these would be location, price, pictures, utilities, amenities, taxes and whether the property is mortgaged, the kind of community (schools, shopping), the construction nitty-gritty (electric, plumbing, heating/cooling, etc.).

Home inspection tips:-

Okay, now we assume you have frozen on your neighborhood and you have started looking at some real estate. Here’s what you must check:

• Check the toilets, sinks, tubs, tiles and the plumbing in the bathroom. Look for breakages, ultra-used equipment and leakages. Similarly, check the kitchen’s sink.
• Check the woodwork in the house and look for termite-invasions, excessive use, poor
  
  quality of wood, etc.
• Do a general check on electrical appliances, windows, electrical outlets and the garage.
• Take a close look at the exterior of the house: look for cracks, damaged gutters, water seepages and the ventilation.
• While inspecting the interiors take a hard look at the quality of the flooring, cracks inside the house, loose tiles and water stains. It is important to ensure that your home is well built and in top habitable condition. You may also think of appointing a home inspection specialist who may find more faults than you.

Final paperwork:-

Once you have selected your home and have completed all the inspections needed, you are now ready to buy it. Every country has a different set of property laws and it will be prudent that you see your lawyer for all the paperwork involved for the closure of the deal. A wise man once said, “A house is made of walls and beams; a home is built with love and dreams.” and a wisecrack once remarked, “Home is where you can scratch where it itches”. Both these statements are oh-so-true and so relevant, that their importance cannot be overemphasized. If you’re planning to buy a property, go ahead and follow our guide – it will pay you rich dividends.

This Home Buying Guide is brought to you by www.GO-Globe.com , an international free online

classifieds real estate portal, developed in Dubai, Europe, India.

You can save yourself a whole lot of cash when you register your property or when you search for your dream home on our site. We currently have over 4000 properties listed on our site.

Body :- Part 1: Print Media: The Need To Change

Harold Wilson once said – He who rejects change is the architect of decay. The only human institution which rejects progress is the cemetery. These are the kind of words that should be heard, read and heeded by the publishers of print media, because if these words fall on deaf ears, the print media will surely and gradually plot its own extinction.

Think about it: Once upon a time human beings had never ever imagined they could fly from one place to another; when airplanes came into the picture, humans couldn’t ever imagine that one day humans could land on the moon. And now, we are talking about colonizing Mars!

Similarly, people never imagined that computers and the Internet would change their life so drastically. And even when computers came into our lives, no one had an inkling that soon we would have an operating system that could enable common folk to access computers, followed by the power of the Internet to communicate worldwide. Did you know that around the mid 1950s, IBM was considered a typewriter company!

Even today we don’t know what the next big this is going to be – it can be prediction technologies or it can be simulation models. No matter what’s going to come to us, the fact remains that the whole world – or at least, the savvy side of the whole world – is going online.

However, many companies who publish the printed word across the world do not have a “respond” model. They do not know that the next-generation architecture of multicore processors, with their phenomenal processing abilities, can take on and process massive amounts of data. They do not realize that the power of “online” will change the way we live, the way we think and the way we conduct our business. They do not want to move away from the comfort of their “mental cubicle”, and they would focus on what they are doing rather than waking up to foresee the catastrophe that’s about to hit them.

Computers are going to talk to you, they will start understanding your voice, recognizing your face, make it possible for you to interact with another person in a godforsaken part of the world, and so on. Given this scenario would you still stick to reading books and newspapers only? Some purists might, because all purists are like dinosaurs – they do not change and when change hits them, they complain that their tribe and their ideology are going extinct and the world is turning into a lousy place.

This article, then, is a wake-up call for all print companies who do not realize or know about the power of “web development and the online media”. May the force be with them.

Part 2: Online v/s Print: The Face-off

Printing gained major prominence and acceptance after World War II when a whole lot of stimulated minds put their thoughts and ideas into print and that sort of revolutionized the print industry. Production of newspapers, novels and books boomed and since then, there has been no looking back for the print industry.

Up to now

You will be aware that online text readership is expanding phenomenally. There are billions of web pages for approximately one billion users online and the number is growing by the day. Search engines, niche portals, online shops, emails, messengers have made the world a much, much smaller place and it is just a matter of time before most businesses go online. This online revolution is much bigger and faster than the print revolution and, by the looks of it, the print media will be in for a whole lot of trouble if they do not adapt to the changing scenario.

Here is a comparative analysis of online v/s print media:

1. Costs: Online publishing costs are incomparably lower than printing costs (labor, machinery, paper, color, distribution, etc.) and, with newer technologies and faster processors flooding the markets, the online machine publishing (blogs, forums, etc.) costs will keep going down, while the “human” costs may remain the same or become lower than similar costs incurred by the print media. For example, a printing unit will need several technicians to produce a newspaper and organize it for distribution. Comparatively, an online publishing unit does not need even 1% of the workforce that a print unit requires.
2. Distribution: Online distribution is literally free. Once a publisher has rented a server space, then all he needs is a programmer and designer to upload his content. There are no printing costs involved, no paper is used, no print run is needed, and no ink is required. But there are publicity costs involved – the online publisher has to promote his website to get people to read his content. Online marketing is done by registering the site with various search engines and then by optimizing the site using search engine optimization (SEO) techniques. Normally, a publisher should appoint a web development company to market and promote his site online and this entails a cost. Where newspapers are concerned, they too pay a certain commission to their distributors or they have to set up a separate distribution department.
3. Editing: Editing is very easy when it comes to online publishing. Once a mistake is noticed, a correction can be easily made within minutes. The print media offers no such luxuries. Of course, online media is not error-free – publishers should take care to see that there are no broken links, badly programmed pages, etc. However, corrections can be made in online documents, but for a printed document once a document is printed then correcting it is impossible – you would need to reprint.
4. Time: Print publishing is a time-consuming affair, whereas online publishing is fast, instant and depends on the publisher’s web development team. News can be uploaded in online media immediately as it breaks – there are no “publishing” delays.
5. Audience Preferences: People are used to the printed word and it is going to take time for them to make online media a “habit”. But experts and futurists feel that this will surely happen and it’s just a matter of time before online media overtakes the print media.. Ask yourself this question: What was the usage of land-lines before mobile technology invaded the market? The answer is there right in your mind – the question is whether realization has struck you yet!
6. Profits: As of now, print publishing makes a hell of a lot of money than online publishing. Again, this is because of people’s habits, and as we have discussed above, habits will change eventually. But, again, experts feel that all this will change – good sites with news are already attracting hordes of advertisements, specially targetting the yuppie and middle-age groups, and many niche content sites have a subscription model going for them. Given the rapidly expanding Internet audience, it is just a matter of time before massive profits start rolling in for the online publishers.

In the end, assuming you have great content, you must go online if and only if:
(i) you are sure about making money out of it;
(ii) you have adequate working capital; and
(iii) you are backed by an experienced, cutting-edge and consistent web development team. If you meet these conditions, then you are certain to make a living out of online media – something that you may not be able to do if you work with the print medium. Online media, also called new media, provides unique and new opportunities that have yet to be fully explored. A publisher who perseveres will discover the real potential of publishing online like no other. So, if you have it in you, go for online media and start learning how to make your buck out there This article is brought to you by: www.Go-Globe.com

GO-Estates.com has tied up with Amlaki, a real estate software solutions provider to jointly exploit each others' synergies and strengths.

The benefits have already started rolling out and Amlaki's customers have been amply rewarded twice already: First, all Amlaki customers have been rewarded with a substantial discount on a GO-Estates.com platinum membership subscription. Second, using their Amlaki Software, Amlaki's customers can export their entire real estate database and post it on GO-Estates.com by a more click of a button, thereby displaying their properties easily to a worldwide audience.

GO-Globe.com - making milioners out of users

Dubai-Based Free E-Commerce Site Enables Mega Deals Across The World

Over $2100 million in property transactions, $12.3 million in vehicle and electronic sales, and over 360 listed reputed employers with hundreds of jobs on offer: that’s what GO-Globe.com has achieved in a short span – just 16 months – of its online existence.

For it’s introduction into the market, GO-Globe.com (earlier known as Go-Gulf.com) is a free e-commerce site that is generating wildfire traffic across the world, getting 58,851 hits daily. What it does is simple: It provides free listings to buyers and sellers of property, electronics and vehicles, and then releases aggressive, targeted web campaigns, with the result that the hits keep coming from all over the world and the registered members keep multiplying rapidly. The best thing about it: IT’S FREE!

GO-Globe.com covers over 63 countries, with the top 5 countries in terms of accessing GO-Globe.com including United Arab Emirates, USA, United Kingdom, India, and France. Also, Italy, Saudi Arabia and Turkey are quickly catching up. With Dubai property being a red-hot investment market nowadays, hordes of international investors also(delete also) flock to GO-Globe.com to check what’s available and to clinch the deal right away.

Says Mr. Serge Brouillet, a property owner based in Dubai, “Since I placed my villa for sale on the website GO-Estates.com, part of GO-Globe.com, I have received numerous enquires as well as received 3 offers to purchase. All of this in less than a week from posting. GO-Globe works!”

And this is not all, there’s more action on the way. GO-Globe.com’s CEO Karel Zeman says: “We want to be trailblazers and are about to introduce many more listing categories and exciting features on GO-Globe.com. Six new sites are in the pipeline and these will add to the richness of GO-Globe.com. We just want the hits to keep coming and the trades moving. We intend to stay on top of the search engines’ rankings because we want to make GO-Globe.com a truly global marketplace that is free and easily accessible to every Internet user. The action has just started and you haven’t seen anything yet.”

For all you know, the Dubai-based GO-Globe.com may have just hit the right formula to “make your life easier…and more profitable!

Over $2100 million in real estate property transactions, $12.3 million in vehicle and electronic sales, and over 360 listed reputed employers with hundreds of jobs on offer: that’s what GO-Globe.com has achieved in a short span – just 16 months – of its online existence.

GO-Globe.com (earlier known as Go-Gulf.com) is a free e-commerce site that is generating wildfire traffic across the world, getting 58,851 hits daily. What it does is simple: It provides free listings to buyers and sellers for real estate property investments, electronics and vehicles, and then releases aggressive, targeted online campaigns, with the result that the hits keep coming from all over the world and the registered members keep multiplying rapidly. The best thing about it: IT’S FREE!

GO-Globe.com covers over 63 countries, with the top 5 countries in terms of accessing GO-Globe.com including United Arab Emirates, USA, United Kingdom, India, and France. Also, Italy, Saudi Arabia and Turkey are quickly catching up. With Dubai property being a red-hot real estate investment market nowadays, hordes of international property investors flock to GO-Globe.com to check what’s available and to clinch the deal right away.

Says Mr. Serge Brouillet, Canadian property owner based in Dubai, “Since I placed my villa for sale on the website GO-Estates.com, part of GO-Globe.com, I have received numerous enquires as well as received 3 offers to purchase. All of this in less than a week from posting. GO-Globe works!”

And this is not all, there’s more action on the way. GO-Globe.com’s CEO Karel Zeman says: “We want to be trailblazers and are about to introduce many more listing categories and exciting features on GO-Globe.com. Six new sites are in the pipeline and these will add to the richness of GO-Globe.com. We just want the hits to keep coming and the trades moving. We intend to stay on top of the search engines’ rankings because we want to make GO-Globe.com a truly global marketplace that is free and easily accessible to every Internet user. The action has just started and you haven’t seen anything yet.”

For all you know, the Dubai-based GO-Globe.com may have just hit the right formula to “make your life easier…and more profitable”!

As a part of long term plans Sep 7, 2006 was launched www.go-globe.com – new portal for Cars, jobs, real estate, properties and many more.

Another portal goes online - GO-Gears.com - Land, Water, Air, International car, boats, planes portal. Beta (Trial) version.

GO-Gulf.com changed their website into portal. Search engine within all GO Network portals.

GO Network reached 1.000.000 hits per month.

GO-Estates.com - 1st page on Yahoo.com and Yahoo.in (Keywords: Dubai properties, Dubai real estate, Dubai real estates, etc.)

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Job ban scrapping, easing of other labour rules in UAE caused the change.

The end of employment ban rule and the easing of other labour regulations in the UAE has increased workforce mobility in the region, according to a labour market expert.

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Shopping on the net has become easier with the launch of the shopper friendly portal, GO-Bazaar.com, an online international classifieds portal in the Middle East, by the Dubai-based IT solutions provider, GO-Gulf FZE.

GO-Bazaar allows users to post unlimited adverts for free. It is also commission free for purchasers. GO-Bazaar puts the buyer and seller together for direct contact and purchasing decisions.

Initial statistics show around 4,000 visits per month. The products available include mobile phones, games, electronics, music, sports, etc. It also has a matrimonial section - all about cars, motorcycles, boats and planes. Karel Zeman, CEO, said that the membership is free.

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The United Arab Emirates strict labour laws are making it difficult for Emirati companies to create competitive job environment, according to Karel Zeman, CEO of the Dubai-based employment website 'GO-Jobs.com'

GO-bazaar, the on-line, international classified portal in the Middle East, launched today. Billed as an international online portal where buyers meet sellers from around the world, GO-bazaar comes out of Beta testing today and already has a wide variety of computer products available online.

Quick and easy to use, GO-bazaar allows users to post unlimited adverts for free. It is also commission free for purchasers. GO-bazaar puts the buyer and seller together for direct contact and purchasing decisions.

Benefits for members to sell on GO-bazaar include (membership is free):

• Reach thousands of visitors around the world
• Quick and easy
• Post unlimited adverts for free
• Each advert can be accompanied by up to 4 photographs
• Sections for new, new with warranty, used and used with warranty goods
• Fully managed from any Internet connection in the world 24/7
• Easy selection of country and currency

Over the past week, and while in Beta version, GO-bazaar has contacted hundreds of computer companies who are interested in selling their goods on-line to a wider audience than they normally reach through their retail presence and existing contacts.

Karel Zeman, CEO, commented:

“GO-bazaar is a fantastic free service for buyers and sellers who want to use the power of the internet to buy and sell products. There is one underlying point; GO-bazaar makes your classifieds easier.

“Every year at this time, Dubai experiences ’Gitex Mania’ and goes wild to buy the latest computer products at the best prices. We chose to launch GO-bazaar now because of the interest from computer resellers and the general public to be connected throughout the whole year – enabling communities to buy and sell technology products locally, regionally and internationally. Of course, it’s also a lot less tiring on the feet to be able to surf to your next computer bargain from the comfort of your home, office or local Internet Cafe”.

www.GO-bazaar.com

GO-Gulf FZE launched 2 more new portals in Beta versions. GO-Jobs.com (www.go-jobs.com) and GO-Bazaar.com (www.go-bazaar.com); debugged full versions launch is scheduled on September 10 th, 2005; after this new great features are going to be updated regularly. GO-Jobs.com – The future of jobs is international job portal and GO-Bazaar.com – makes your classifieds easier, is international classifieds portal including Matrimonial section and Gears section – all about cars, motorcycles, boats and planes. More projects are on the way…

GO-Gulf FZE has become member of Dubai Property Group (www.dubaipropertygroup.com) a forum which aims to examine real estate industry practices and procedures, for the benefit of all concerned. Moreover, it serves as a platform for its members in discussing and debating all real estate related issues.

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"GO-Estates online, the UAE's first real estate portal provides simple, transparent and quick global coverage that will help companies as well as individuals in the real estate business to buy, sell, rent, share and lease properties more effectively..."

The first fully independent and comprehensive UAE real estate portal, www.go-estates.com, launched by the Dubai Airport Free Zone - based GO-Gulf FZE two months ago, has now inaugurated the international module of GO-Estates online, providing an opportunitiy to post properties to anybody, anywhere, anytime, including those in specialised countries, the UAE being first of them ...

The first fully independent and comprehensive UAE real estate portal, www.go-estates.com, recently inaugurated the international module of GO-Estates online, providing users with the opportunity to post properties globally.

The www.go-estates.com portal provides simple, transparent and quick global coverage, and allows companies as well as individuals in the real estate business to buy, sell, rent, share and lease properties more effectively. Additional enhancements include answers to Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) on aspects of property and real estate answered by Dr. Go, and powered by Emirates Advocates. It also offers a weekly property newsletter powered by AME Info, and an Islamic finance calculator, Ijaara, powered by Amlak Finance.

Karel Zeman, Chief Executive Officer behind the project chose Dubai to launch the portal to capitalize on the Emirate’s booming real estate market to springboard into other countries. In an interview during the launch, Zeman commented: “We are very enthusiastic about the initial response that the portal has achieved, and that has reflected the need for an independent source of information. The portal has been gaining around 200 first time visitors daily, and the real estate agencies have termed it ‘a great product that was missing in this market’".

Following the demand from people wishing to advertise their properties to an International market globally and the demand from the visitors looking for properties to rent and buy direct from the owner, GO-Estates.com was launched to enable everyone to avoid big advertising costs and at the same time advertise to a huge global market. "Act locally, target globally", he advised.

"The UAE government supports very well this direction, the direction of using internet for eGovernment, education, traffic departments, immigration, as well as building internet cities, Zeman said.

The first fully independent and comprehensive UAE real estate portal, www.go-estates.com, was launched by the Dubai Airport Free Zone-based GO-Gulf FZE today, June 9, 2005.

The portal, which provides simple, transparent and quick global coverage, allows companies as well as individuals in the real estate business to buy, sell, rent, share and lease properties more effectively, through Free as well as Basic, Silver, Gold and Platinum membership. www.go-estates.com provides centralised online listing resource for residential, commercial and industrial property seekers.

"Our portal is an effective tool for visitors and members to increase business turnover as it gives all extensive coverage of the real estate sector across the UAE with a share to all emirates," Karel Zeman, CEO of GO-Gulf.com, established by a team of IT professionals and specialising in the development of web applications, said at the company's business office on Sheikh Zayed Road.

"We provide the frame for complete information about the properties, including detailed location maps as we realise that investors living within and outside the UAE would like to know everything to help them make the right choice. We also alert website users by email as soon as new properties listed on our website, thus reducing the property search time and, of course, the chance of loosing it," Mr. Zeman said,

What makes www.go-estates.com stand out is that other portals miss on one thing other, usually concentrate only on Dubai, restrict usage to companies and brokers, and are themselves connected to the real estate business, etc.

The website offers answers to FAQs (Frequently Asked Questions) on aspects of property and real estate answered by Dr. Go powered by Emirates Advocates. It also offers a weekly property newsletter powered by AME Info, and an Islamic finance calculator, Ijaara, powered by Amlak Finance.

Among other benefits, the visitors to www.go-estates.com do not have to pay commission. They can search properties quickly and free, bookmark your favourite properties, post advertisements free and without set up fee or hidden costs. The members can select property category, track adverts easily, post property pictures and contact details, organise the postings and have full overview in statistics. More benefits for visitors and members are on the way…