Buying a home is a major commitment that includes more than structural research. You need to know about the neighborhood and city that the home resides within. Every piece to this puzzle contributes to your quality of life. In most cases, you’ll want to remain in this home for several years. Before you place a deposit on that perfect home, take a good look at all of the options available with the property. You might be surprised at both the advantages and drawbacks to the purchase.

Feel the Vibe

If you’ve lived in a particular city for many years, you may already know the neighborhoods very intimately. However, every block seems to have its own personality or vibe. Walk along the street where you want to purchase a home. Choose different times and days to perform this activity. A street with many children playing in their yards is preferable for most families. In contrast, questionable characters loitering in the neighborhood is a sign that you should look elsewhere for properties.

Neighborhood Amenities

Some of the newest communities being built have shared amenities. There might be a recreation center where weight rooms, pools and other perks are shared among the neighbors. Although the pool might be a communal type, this fact means that you aren’t required to maintain it on your own. The entire neighborhood contributes to its care. In contrast, these amenities may not be wanted by your family. You should look for another property if that’s the case.

HOA Fees

Most communities today have HOA or homeowner’s association fees. These monthly charges go into a shared account where it’s divided out to different property needs. There’s normally a reserve for exterior upkeep, such as landscaping and woodwork. Fees will also cover those recreational perks. As more amenities are added to a community, however, those fees will rise. Take these costs into consideration before you place a bid on a home.

Varying Property Sizes

A quaint cottage might be perfect for your needs today, but a growing family can quickly feel cramped in this space. New communities are often built with varying home sizes. One- to three-bedroom structures are usually available for sale. Consider your family’s current and future size. Ideally, you should buy a home that’s slightly larger than you need today. New babies, returning college students and aging parents might move in soon.

Proximity to Work

No one wants a long commute to work. You may find the perfect community for your family, but it’s located an hour away from your office. Try to pick a home that’s reasonably close to schools and employment. Ideally, take a test drive during rush hour to see the traveling distance. A home won’t be very attractive if you’re always on the road. A short commute time with a reasonable home price is your main goal during the bidding process.

Picture yourself in the here and now, and then imagine your life five years in the future. If a property won’t fit your needs within that time period, look for another home. Although you can certainly sell a home whenever you please, the investment is enhanced as you pay down the balance and watch the equity rise. You should have some wealth in the home before it’s sold to another bidder.

Running a business without the requisite insurance is like playing with fire near a leaking fuel pump. It is unnecessarily risky and can cost you a lot.

Many businesses, particularly startups and small business owners, don’t see any need for an insurance coverage. For many of them, the excuse is that insurance is often too expensive and that it’ll eat into the business’ profits. In fact, studies have shown that many small business owners often incorrectly estimate that insurance costs are often triple the standard costs.

Every insurance company has an affordable coverage for most business. Talk to a real insurance agent today before making those assumptions and leaving your business unprotected.

What Does Commercial Insurance Cover?

Before we move forward, you need to understand that commercial insurance is typically categorized into three:

• Property Insurance

• Commercial Liability Insurance

• Workers Compensation

Property Insurance

This insurance policy is meant to cover any loss or damages to your personal property. For example, if your personal office goes up in flames, your property insurance coverage will take care of all arising expenses, repairs, and losses.

Depending on your specific needs, property insurance, is often best combined with a few other necessary insurance policies such as debris removal, glass, machinery, crime, theft, kitchen equipment, business interruption and so much more.

You need to speak with an insurance agent to come up with the best commercial insurance coverage for your unique business situation.

Commercial Liability Insurance

Commercial liability insurance policies are designed to protect every business from claims filed against the business entity by outside parties. These claims, usually made by third parties who are injured on the business premises, would be paid by the business out of its own pockets if they don’t have a commercial liability coverage.

Unfortunately, most businesses or their owners are often held liable for injuries sustained on their premises. It doesn’t matter if the injury was caused by a mistake, carelessness or negligence. As long as someone gets injured while in your place of business, you would need to assume the costs of their compensation or pay for damages.

Having a commercial liability insurance policy also protects your property in the event of damage, covers company products as well as all contractors working on your premises. It essentially provides liability coverage against all foreseen and unforeseen events that could happen on your site.

Therefore, if someone were to sue you for injuries sustained while working on your business premises or loses their items, the insurance company will cover the litigation expenses and settlement up to the policy limits.

Please note that this is not the same as workers compensation –hence the emphasis on third parties. You’ll need to take out a different insurance policy for that one.

Workers Compensation

Worker compensation insurance policies are often designed to help cover injuries sustained by your employees while on the job. For instance, if a driver gets in an accident while running errands for the company or a construction worker falls off a scaffold and breaks a leg, all arising expenses and compensation will be covered by the workers compensation insurance policy.

Now that you know all these, it is imperative to start shopping for an adequate commercial insurance policy that will suit your business’ needs. Talk to insurance agents at Insurance Land for guidance. You may not need all three policies at once. You can and should start with at least one, and then add more as your business grows and become a bigger operation.

If you’ve kept tabs on the technology industry over the last decade, you’ll know all about Charles Phillips.

Co-president and director of Oracle, MD of Morgan Stanley and now CEO of Infor, to say his CV is impressive is a massive understatement.

Unsurprisingly, many coin him as one of the best leaders in the field of technology.

However, rather than looking at his career in general terms, it’s worth breaking it down to see exactly what makes this man, or specifically his businesses, tick.

Infor, and the rest of Phillips’ business affairs are just blessed with success and as we’ve found out with two of his biggest projects – a lot of this is put down to shrewd acquisitions.

It started at Oracle

Being co-president and director of Oracle for seven years is something substantial in itself. When you also look at the figures Charles Phillips tenure at the tech giant becomes all the more impressive; during that period he saw the company’s revenue grow almost 300%.

One of the main reason for this surge in revenue was because of Phillips’ acquisitions. During the seven years, no fewer than 70 companies were acquired. Some of the names included BEA Systems and PeopleSoft – huge brands that just made Oracle an even bigger beast in its marketspace.

Ultimately, it’s one of the reasons why Oracle are rated as being one of the top business software companies in the world.

It then continued into Infor

As coincidence may have it, Oracle actually stand in the way of Phillips now. Now part of Infor, Oracle and SAP are the two companies currently dominating business software – although it would be fair to say that this gap is most certainly closing.

Again, acquisitions have played a huge part in this. After joining Infor in 2010, Infor has proceeded to acquire at least two different companies per year.

Perhaps the most impressive thing is that these companies aren’t just being bought because of their size. Instead, Phillips has orchestrated a completely different approach, delving into various niches in a bid to take the market away from the likes of SAP and Oracle. In other words, there is plenty of thinking behind each of these acquisitions – they are making Infor completely different to their competitors, which could work wonders in the long run.

What’s next for Phillips?

If Phillips’ career is anything to go by, one could assume that he is going to continue acquiring companies for Infor in a bid to make them overtake their two main rivals.

However, there is also a suspicion that he might start to slow down in this area – with the company now planning a marketing offensive which should give them the impetus to begin their assault on the “big two”.

Whatever he does, you wouldn’t bet against him – he’s achieved miraculous results with this industry and if recent interviews are anything to go by, he doesn’t look to be stopping anytime soon.