We were approached by the nice people of City Living and asked if we would post a guest blog. Of course we would love to we said and here is their guest blog : ‘ City Living: The 5 DO’s and 5 DON’Ts.’
We coould add a sixth – ‘Do read this blog’. We have also set up a guest blog section on the left so if anyone else wants to post please let us know.
Renting a flat in Leeds (or anywhere else) is a serious matter and it is important to think things through. Here are the 5 DO’s and 5 DON’Ts that you should be aware of…
It is essential to have a really good look around any accommodation before deciding to move in! When you are going for a viewing it is a good idea to take a friend along with you. This will give you an extra pair of eyes for spotting any potential problems and it is also a good security measure.
• DO Look Everywhere you Can for Somewhere to Rent
When you are looking for flats in Leeds, you will need to stay ahead of the competition. There are plenty of other potential tenants out there and you need to be carrying out your searching well ahead of everyone else. Check any local papers the moment they come out, look at ALL notice boards and ask as many people as you can! Even in this technological age, word of mouth is still an excellent way of finding a flat.
• DO Find Out How Near Any Amenities Are.
We will all need to use basic services and it is a big bonus if they are close at hand. How far will you have to walk/drive to use the nearest shop? And are there any doctors or dentists in the immediate area?
It is also worth finding out about parking facilities. Will you need an expensive permit just to leave your car outside! And if you do not drive, then how far away is the bus stop?
• DO Think Like a Buyer!
When you are looking for a flat, it is destined to be your home and you should bear this in mind at all times. It is you that will be living in this property, so it has to be the right one.
You may be pretty desperate to get yourself a flat, but don’t be impulsive. If you go rushing into things only to find out that you are totally unhappy living in a flat you will end up kicking yourself.
• DON’T Move in Without Doing a Little Research.
Unfortunately, not all city centre flats in Leeds will complement your lifestyle and it is a very good idea to do some research… Try visiting the location of the accommodation at different times of the day to see if there are any particular problems. A nearby thriving night life might be your thing so checking the place out a night will tell you how active an area is. If the quiet and calm life is for you then visiting at night might raise the issue of noise and rowdy customers. It’s not all about the flat itself.
• DON’T Ever Redecorate a Flat Without Checking With the Landlord First!
You should never go blazing in with plans of redecorating. Of course, you will want to give a flat your own personal touch (and the landlord may even be all for it), but you should always ask first! Besides, it’s polite if nothing else.
• DON’T Move in Until Any Obvious Problems Have Been Sorted Out.
A flat should not have any visible problems when you first move in. If you spot a damp patch, a cluster of mouse droppings or a loose electrical socket, then DO NOT sign an agreement or move in until it has been sorted out!
• DON’T Settle for Second Best!
You may feel prepared to put up with certain things just so that you can get settled in somewhere, but DONT. If a flat is not quite right then walk away and look elsewhere.
So what I hear many of you say. Well, I am top 10 ten blogger don’t you know! Anyway, enough about me. I like what Zoopla are trying to achieve.
Has this only just happened, not really. I have been liking them for a while, but I had for some time seen them as just another portal, albeit one with deep pockets. So what has changed? Nothing striking I can put my finger on, but I now get the feeling that Zoopla appears to have a heart, a strong loudly beating one! I am feeling the Zoopla love.
Rightmove on the other hand may have been caught napping. Yes they appear to be aware of Zoopla, but I don’t think they have taken them seriously enough and this will come back to bite them.
Is this my sudden brand awareness? Perhaps, but it is not me they need to convert, it is the Rightmove masses and new house searchers/buyers (which are dwindling in any event) on the one hand and the agents on the other hand. Their iphone app is very successful and I see the younger new house buying/renting generation as a key target area.
The big question however is whether Zoopla’s pockets can go deep enough. There are no indications that the money will dry up and the VC team behind them is second to none. Indeed, they have just spent whatever it costs to get their TV ads on prime time slots (see their ad below).
They know they have a huge challenge and it is not worth going over old ground here, but I am on board and want to see them do well.
Thanks to the guys at The Express and Star Newspapers who have listed the Owl as one of the top 10 bloggers in England. Not bad for a bird!
They said that they liked the owl as we were honest and told it how it is, yep that is us: So let’s tell it how it is and be honest.
Well, another top 10 announcement just popped up in twitter. Zoopla have made the top 10 of top 100 startups and Time magazine has just listed the top 50 websites.
Jemima Kiss of the Guardian take on all this is absolutely brilliant and I will quote her verbatim. How is that for honesty!
‘… Lists are always pretty exciting for the anally retentive, but doubly so when you’re on them …’
Anyway, thanks once again and I am off to build a shelf for the awards that will obviously follow
Did you know Google has a page for Real Estate Agents?! FOREM posts on some of the top google products for real estate agents and here is my take on a few on them.
I have long since championed the need to tie yourself with Google, not more so because it is free, but if you were still in doubt, have a look at these.
1. Google Maps
If you are not using google maps to make listings simpler for house buyers to find when they are looking for properties you are losing sales. Yes there are other maps to use, but this post is about Google 2. You can add your stock/properties to Google
Let’s just say that again. You can feed your properties directly into Google for free! Do I really need to tell you why this could be useful?! Free traffic, extend your reach and generate more leads through natural search. Results are shown on Google Maps (see point above). 3. More mapping goodies with Google Maps API
Not only can you have maps, but you can have interactive maps. You can display your listings on maps and satellite views that you see on google. You can also show where your office is based. 4. Google Earth
An extension to the API above really. Publish your properties in Google Earth in glorious 3D satellite images and allow property information to have schools, parks, roads and much more all shown at the same time. Have you played with Google Earth. If you have, I am sure you love it, well now image your properties within that system.
5. Google Places is a home for your business
Around 30% of house buying/renting searches start by looking for agents online. So yes, you need your business to be found and displayed in these search results. Easy to use and you can upload more than one office. 6. Google SketchUp – 3D models
We wrote about this a while back and if you haven’t use it yet, give it a go. Create a 3D model for your listings and wow your customers. Spend a few hours on this and your customers will think you have spent a fortune on design. Not just for the home, it will do surroundings so you can take this as far as you like. Moreover, upload this to Google Earth and you really have a ‘wow’ factor. If I was selling my house and my agent did this I would be impressed. 7. Gmail and Google Apps
All my email systems run on gmail. It works perfectly, syncs up with everything I use and worst case scenario I can still access it through a gmail account anywhere. Sharing documents, communicating with colleagues is all made easy with a pool of google tools accessible from anywhere. 8. Google profile and Google Buzz
Profiles and a social network make it easier for people to find you and communicate with you. You can include photos and anyone with a google account can easily get in touch with you. 9. Show your properties on YouTube
The vast majority of US agents video properties. We are still coming to terms with it here and I am not sure why. For those already doing it or thinking of doing it, YouTube offers a kind of video property portal for free. Create a YouTube channel and just upload those videos.
The bottom line is you would be far better off spending a few hours to do the above than debating what to write in a flyer to post through a letterbox! And, oh yes, did I mention it was FREE!
The title is lifted directly from the end of a 1000watt newsletter.
The Americans were discussing technology that allows agents to be vetted by sellers using online questionnaires. Quite brilliant I thought, I must pass this information on to agents within the UK. But then I remembered recent discussions over here about the benefits of using the ipad and its usefulness, which led me down the dark path of questioning my motives of pushing yet more technology to agents who were not yet ready/willing to embrace what is already available.
To them I say as we have said many times, we now live in a world of social media, we communicate through social platforms and ‘Digital Impressions are now first impressions’. If you are not in it, you have no first impression and will be overlooked, if you are in it, you need a good first impression.
So how does one make a good first impression? By applying old fashioned values I would humbly suggest. Clean and tidy presentation (your website, blog, twitter, brand look and feel), be polite (what you are saying), be professional (be informative), smile (how do you do this online? write from the heart), engage your customers (the equivalent of calling them back, talk to them), show them you care about them.
On the latter point, you may be interested to read a recent BBC intereview of two early adopters of Twitter. What both writers highlighted was Twitter is more personable for them and brings them closer to the people they like. One actually said Twitter ‘is like facebook, but with people I care about’. Does that suprise you? It did me a little and is a very important point. Daily I see real estate agents blindly posting property details on their twitter feed. Do these people care about me and their other followers – no. Why I am following them then? Good point, as of today I am not, their first impression is poor.
The English People Daily reports on a new wave of spending in the UK housing market from Chinese investors. Estate Agent Today also carries the story, but doesn’t mention this as the source or link back to them.
Apparently, the Chinese spent 170 million odd on central London property alone in the last 12 months to March 2010. The article quotes Liam Bailey of Knight Frank as saying ‘…Asian investors are now buying more than a fifth of all central London’s new properties and account for 49 percent of all investment purchases in London …’
This seems a very high number to me and I am sure I read somewhere last week that it was the Spanish, Greeks, Americans etc who were the next big property investors. Of course this is all ‘research’ and guesstimation from Knight Frank and their conclusions appear to be, domestic ownership is harder in China, the economy is forcing people to look outside and more and more Asians are sending their offspring to UK Universities.
I know a few people who got fat helping Russians buy property over here and I am sure those same people are looking at the latest foreign investment with pound note signs in their eyes.
That said, this is not the super rich, multi million pound purchases, this is more modest £400-800,000 purchases for their kids (lucky kids is all I can say!!). If this is the case, then this puts everyone in with a shout of securing this channel, epscially those close to Universites and good transportation links. To this end, this will be the only time you will hear me recommend buying another domain name. Purchase a Chinese domain name and point it to your website. Go one stage further and provide a decent translation of at least your home page so our Chinese friends can find ‘London property’ on the Chinese google search. (it is not that simply, but this is a good first step).
I conducted a quick test. I translated ‘london property’ into Chinese, then searched on Google China. The results provided me a page of chinesse and whilst I have no idea what the text says, you can clearly identify the domain names, none of which I recognise. This says to me ‘opportunity’.
Drinks !! You may have been following on Twitter, but if not, there is a property people gathering on Thursday 5 August. Guest star Drew Meyers will be joining us along with some old friends and many more property people. Come join the fun at http://www.jewelcoventgarden.co.uk/ from 1700 ish on – or earlier if it is nice day. View Larger Map
I was watching BBC breakfast this morning (which is very rare – it is too depressing for morning entertainment) and there was a guy from a dating site (dating site expert) and a shrink (sorry expert psycologist) discussing social networks and the like and how the dumming down of children will be the end of the world.
Much the same as our grand parents did when we were all watching the Magic Roundabout (created by people out of their skulls on LSD), much the same as our parents did when the first arcade games came out (space invaders will drive our children to gang warfare – maybe they got this one right?!) much the same as younger parents did about telly tubbies and so now the ‘experts’ claim that our youth is losing the ability to socialise due to social networks. Rubbish! They have never been more social, we just don’t really understand (as our parents didn’t really understand the Sex Pistols).
Anyway, I kept hearing at the beginning of the sentence “I think …. ” so i started counting and got bored at 20. Yes, 20 sentences starting with “I think …”. Who are these self proclaimed experts that believe their opinion is so valuable that they can pronounce ‘I think’ as they were delivering Judgment in a Court of Law?!
One of the so say experts waffled on about how we no longer go to the Pub to chat. Granted, I particularly like this occupation, but pubs are a yesteryear and (a) there are not many traditional pubs left and (b) society now frowns on drinking (in public at least) and (c) they don’t want to!
Parents used to complain that children would hog the telephone chatting to their friends, now they complain they talk to their friends online too much. Maybe parents just complain too much!
I then read a report on the BBC from a Nethan Zuckerman speech where he is having a pop at the media. He makes some valid points (as one would expect) about the media actually narrowing the news channels with social networks just compounding the problem through the creation of smaller pockets of local information. Zuckerman says “… The internet is too big to understand as a whole, so we get a picture of it that’s similar to what our friends see…”. I would agree with this and I would agree that media no longer carries enough International news and is too focussed on what I see as junk media, but ’seeing what our friends see’ has always been the social economics of the groups we form, has it not? When I was a boy (oh god, here he goes….) we met up outside, played football and talked about playing for West Ham. With reference to the talking part, no different today it is just conducted online. To be fair, Zuckerman was not talking about children and social networks and I also didn’t hear him say ‘i think’.
Anyway, I Think … I have rambled enough, but I do believe that social networks are here to stay and serve a great purpose, but I would say that.
A good post from My Property Mentor raises the issue of Tesco’s deforestation of the UK with its steamroller supermarket plan that is spreading throughout the UK like a virus. How is it doing this? Building Tesco villages, aka houses. And what do houses need the most, yes, a supermarket and petrol pumps all lovingly supplied by Tesco.
How do they get planning permission? They provide ‘affordable’ housing and have the power to bully planning officials or broker better under the table deals. This leads to my pet hate (after taxes) of planning regulations and permission within this country.
We all know the system is epidemically flawed. A friend of mine who is a small time developer just happens to know his local planning officers, he builds a large extension on a property without any permission, gets caught, has a word, and low and behold it is all smoothed over, the extension is built. Another friend on the other hand does not know any one or anything about planning and wants to build some decking on the back of the house. He doesn’t know if he should ask for permission, so does the right thing and is advised to apply. He applies and is refused in the most ridiculous case I have ever come across.
These are just two tiny examples of the mountainous stories you hear and see daily of a planning system that just doesn’t work. With such a flagrant disrespect to any sense of the common variety, one has to ask how the system has been allowed to deteriorate to such a level. A number of reasons I suspect, but greed, financial gain, inexperience, lack of knowledge are a few that spring to mind.
Can it get better? I doubt it, especially now the government is talking about slashing redundancy and pension provisions for council staff the ‘retirement’ plan potentially offered by developers to planning officials will be higher than ever.
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