Estate Agent Talk
Five key questions to ask your estate agents.
Selling your home can be a testing time. This traumatic life event can be full of anguish as you question almost every decision you make. Is it the right time? Will I get the asking price I want? Can I find a suitable property in the area? How will this impact family life? The list…
VIDEO: Are you #IRPM Qualified?
In-house or Outsource?
To in-house or outsource? There’s often a debate about the best option when it comes to the subject of property reporting. In some parts of the UK many letting agents are outsourcing their mid-term and inventory requirements, but in other areas there is a high percentage of agents that still use in-house staff to produce…
Do you know your Murphy’s Law from your Black Swan?
If you’re a letting agency owner or property manager, you should be familiar with both of these terms. For those who need reminding or who don’t know, here’s what they mean. Murphy’s Law is an old adage that assumes that if anything can go wrong, it will go wrong. The Black Swan theory, meanwhile, was…
ARPM
The Dummies Guide for Estate & Lettings Agents
Have you heard, there is a new No.1 Best Seller at Amazon you know, even a Sunday Times Best Seller and a Richard and Judy Book of the Week ! .. its called … ‘43 year old Estate / Letting Agent in South West London needs more stock’? … but strangely all the sales of…
Christopher Watkin
How do vendors get the right smell for a successful home sale?
In a recent survey of home buyers by property marketing, content and home staging company A Passion for Homes, the worst thing to encounter on a property viewing is a bad smell! Accounting for almost a third of the results, it is no surprise to most estate agents and property professionals that smells have come…
The costly mistake of not home staging.
I think one thing we can agree on when we attend market appraisals, is that every home is different and how they are presented for sale can vary dramatically. We have previously talked about honesty when conducting an appraisal, and how to broach the subject of home staging. I had a great response on this…
Stephen Brown
House Pricing in UK 2015
How house pricing is managed in UK ?? The average London home will cost more than 1 million English pounds by 2030, according to new analysis as strong jobs growth and a chronic housing shortage keeps pushing up prices, strong growth population and higher employment combined with a shortage of housing would lead house prices above £1m…
Investing in Central London property? Why a Property Manager should be top of your list.
Press Release * SANDFORD The rush to invest in property is understandable. Take a recent headline from The Independent: ‘Buy-to-lets top investments, with returns of up to 1,400%’. It will have caught the eye of savers whose nest eggs may be languishing in cash accounts and ISAs, where the rate of interest is probably hovering…
Christopher Walkey
Property in the North West is highly investable.
Recent findings by HSBC reveal that Manchester has the 7th fastest growing rental yields in the UK and Manchester, Blackpool and Liverpool all made it onto the top 10 list of buy-to-let hotspots according to rental yield. Blackpool was found to be the seaside town with the best rental yields in the UK (7.81% before…
What a Conservative win means for the property sector.
As I write this blog, the Conservatives have won a majority seating in Parliament. As a recruiter entrenched in this sector I have followed the election campaign trying to build a view of what will happen to the sector after the 7th May. Housing policy was definitely used in the ground war to secure seats…
VIDEO: Is there a housing capacity issue in London?
Will you drop your fee Mr(s) Agent ?
“We really like you and what your agency has to offer us, but your fee is much higher than what we are paying now.” If your prospective vendor or landlord is dissatisfied enough to move agents, they are dissatisfied enough to pay more for the better result that you are offering. The difference between your…
Christopher Watkin
Online only… Can they be called ‘Estate Agents’?
Managing a few Estate Agency groups I get to see a lot of debates and opinions shared on varied industry topics. One of the popular discussions is to whether or not online estate agents, a growing popularity currently, should be classified as actual ‘Estate Agents’. As per usual, I will have no real opinion on…
Christopher Walkey
JUST WHAT IS PRIME IN CENTRAL LONDON?
While the exact boundaries defining “Prime Central London” are unclear, isn’t it time we recognised the likes of Hackney, Stratford and Woolwich as some of London’s real “prime” locations? We’ve launched a number of London property developments so far this year, and as is so often the case when we turn our attention to this…