1 in 5 estate agents at risk of going bust

One in five high-street estate agents risk going bust, study claims https://t.co/RT8Kyv8ag5

— Guardian news (@guardiannews) July 31, 2017

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Zoopla buys Hometrack

Zoopla to buy property data provider Hometrack for £120m https://t.co/cYgruuMWCT

— This is Money (@thisismoney) January 31, 2017

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Onthemarket branded a failure by Zoopla

Zoopla wins back customers from online property rival https://t.co/Nz0U02XJa9 #property

— Property PR (@propertypr) November 30, 2016

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Zoopla android app

Zoopla have launched a new app for android phones so if you like the idea of getting mobile with your Zoopla then read more here

Cutting Out Estate Agents?

Will Cutting Out The Estate Agent Ever Work?

Hard economic times often push through changes in the way we go about doing things. People’s budgets are often squeezed, and therefore new ways to save money start to come about. The ‘For Sale By Owner’ model of selling property is nothing new, in America it is extremely popular, although here in the UK it’s still and unknown quantity.

Pros:
The benefits are that you cut out the middle man, thus saving thousands on estate agent commission. You also have the complete freedom of how to market your property, and you also have 100% control over the sale of your house. You can arrange viewings when it’s convenient for you and no-one else!

Cons:
The biggest problem surrounding this business model is that it’s unknown, and many people fear this especially when it’s the sale of their home. It’s still quite a new market, so the amount of potential viewings maybe limited.
We’ve yet to see whether this will be a popular way of selling property in the UK, but it could be quite an interesting watch, especially as people are looking for new ways to save money.

Well...he who dares rodders....he who dares!!

Us For Homes are one of the UK’s largest For Sale By Owner portals, with thousands of privately advertised properties across the UK. Take a look at the site to find out what it’s all about...

New FREE property marketing

Landlords have yet another way of advertising their buy-to-let properties for free with the launch of U-rooms.

Now U-rooms promises to revolutionise the way the rentals market. Now where have I heard that before?

How about the site recently launched by the 'Beeny one'. Tepilo.....again revolutionising the market for letting property.

The downside to these free lettings website is there success will depend on the number of tenants they get going to the site. For most landlords they will prefer to pay a few quid to get their properties listed on the big property portals like Rightmove or Property Finder.

There is one site Makeurmove that even guarantees to list the property on Rightmove for FREE opting for a system that requires the tenant to pay a registration fee in the same way many traditional letting agents do.

In fairness to U-rooms the site seems pretty clean and well designed and apparently the two guys behind it have quite an Internet pedigree; one being the former chief technical officer of lastminute.com and the other headed up the online operation with student lettings at UNITE.

Goodluck guys...you'll need it. The world of free property marketing sites is littered with the discarded bones of revolutionaries.

Let my property

Tips for selling property

If been a landlord has all go too much.

Have a look at the Ten top tips for selling property in this Times article.

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Tenants often your best recruiters

I've arrived back from my little Asia trip to be greeted with an email from one of my tenants telling me that they want to move out. Damm!!! I was fully let and was hoping to keep it this way.

However, all is not lost. In the email the tenant mentions that they have a friend that is interested in renting my flat.

This would not be the first time I've been able to relet a property by renting it out to a friend of the original tenant. I've spoken to the guy and he seems on the face of it a reasonable prospect.

He's working and been employed for a couple of years along with being renting from the same landlord for 4 years. He's looking for a long-term let which is perfect for me. I mentioned straight away that I will need to credit check him and also see copies of his last 6 month bank statements. He seems perfectly fine with this so this is a good sign.

The great thing from my part is that by letting through an introduction in this way I'm avoiding having to spend out on employing a letting agent saving myself a couple of hundred quid, together with the time and inconvenience of marketing the rental property. Even better the new tenant want's to move straight in after my existing tenant moves out. Sounds too good to be true?

I hope not.....

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STUDENT LANDLORDS – HAPPY FREE ADVERTISING

Many student landlords will now be thinking about advertising their properties. I recently received an unsolicited email suggesting we advertise our student properties for only £50 on national internet sites.

We manage all our own properties, so we avoid expensive management and advertising fees. Are you taking control of your advertising?

"We've never had a void"

We have never had a void or paid for an advert. Some major national sites are of limited value for local students looking for properties. Look for internet sites that have a filter, which narrow a search to your particular county or town. Some sites specialize in finding roommates or flats. There are many sites specifically or generally available for the student landlord to use.

Some sites, such as Gumtree, count the number of hits on your advert. Others, such as Vivastreet, email you to enable you to regularly replenish your advert free. Studentbunk and Gumtree will email you directly, when there is interest in your advert. Torent enables you to save and manage your advert from one year to the next. Easyroommate will send you daily emails of people who might be interested in your property from their database. LetaLife can be seen by tenants, landords and agents using the latest mobile technologies such as 3g internet phones, PDA's Blackberry and iPhones. Many have a student property section such as Roastbeef and Torent.

Should I pay to bump up my advert?

Some will try to charge you for extras such as ‘bumping up your advert’, ‘featuring your advert’ or ‘upgrading your package’. We avoid these extras as it takes very little time to repost a new ad.

If your local university has its own housing department then they may be reluctant to advertise your independent property in competition with their housing stock. Try contacting the students union. They are often delighted to promote a more balanced view of good quality student housing to let in the area plus they may have a student housing day, where your properties could be featured.

Get one of your existing student tenants to post paper adverts on university notice boards. We put our contact details on several tear-off perforated slips at the bottom of each advert.

Start by investigating these free to advertise sites:

Gumtree.com; Letalife.com; Studentbunk.com; Iclads.com; Torent.co.uk; Freads.co.uk; Easyroommate.com; Simple2rent.co.uk; Starflats.co.uk; Vivastreet.co.uk; Classifieds.co.uk; Letmatch.co.uk; Roastbeef.co.uk; Houseladder.co.uk ; Yourstudenthouse.co.uk

Once your advert is live try doing a search for your property. You will often find that part of your advert is featured prominently under various sites in the search results. Unlike many of the sites where you have to pay for advertising!

In one search recently our property advert was listed 2nd, 7th, 13th, 17th, 18th and 28th on the first 3 pages of the search and we hadn’t finished posting our adverts on all our usual sites! Spreading you adverts across many sites is very important if you want to be seen.

Ask your tenants for feedback

We always ask the students on which particular site they saw the advert, this may influence where you advertise in future. However some just say they searched for student houses and just clicked on our advert on page one of the search!

If anyone has found another good free site to advertise their student properties, why not share for others to investigate!

Happy free advertising!

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Punch up in property marketing world looms

A punch up is looming in the Internet property marketing world if latest reports by the FT are true.

Internet giant Google is allegedly lining up the UK to launch a website which would allow estate agents to list their property for free. Currently most agents are reliant on property portals such as Rightmove to list property. This can cost the average agency £325 per month.

There have been many attempts to overturn Rightmove's dominance of the Internet property marketing world but all so far have failed. There have been also many attempts at free direct marketing sites that allow properties to be listed for free. The latest being the website Tepilo backed by celebrity landlord and developer Sarah Beeny.

The entry of Google would have the reach and effectiveness to mount a serious challenge to the likes of Rightmove. The City responded to the rumours by immediately marking Rightmoves shares down by 10%.

Read the full article


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Mini property boom - 'shake, shake the room'.

Further evidence of a stabilisation in the housing market came today as official data showed that property prices jumped at the fastest rate in years in July.

The 1.7 per cent increase in the prices paid for properties in England and Wales last month was the biggest monthly jump since May 2004, and takes the annual decline to 11.7 per cent, the smallest decrease since October last year.

Read full article in the Times

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No fee Property Sales - Online Property Marketing Without Agents

The online world is trying to kill off the estate agent again, ... poor unloved creatures they are.

Ever since the early days of the internet ( about 6 years then ) there has been attempts at launching sites that will market residential property at a low commission rate or even with zero .

These have largely all failed, and we are still left with the 'Mr 1 percents' cluttering up our high streets. Estate agents are very much alive and kicking, in fact we have seen an increase in their numbers since the internet launched it predictions of their demise.

Most of the online attempts so far have simply shouted a lot, spent a lot on advertising, and then curled up and died.

Landlords even had their own low cost online property sales site for tenanted property, 'Landlord Trader', who made a valiant effort, but is now dead. RIP

So the estate agents have won then?

Well maybe not, the online community is either a resilient one, or a very stupid one. (the juries out on that)

They have launched their next barrage of attack, and this time it's 'fronted' by a celebrity.

The queen of property development and a 'Beenie Baby' walking factory has launched a new property marketing site that purports to help sellers "maintain 100% control and pay 0% commission when you sell!"

Well good luck to Sarah Beeny and her new venture, Tepilo, which is looking to crack those highly resilient cockroaches, the Estate Agent's.

I will keep a look out for some others that I've noticed recently, but have now forgotten what they were called.

Ah - the wonders of the internet.