Our new eBook and a landlords hat-trick

We have just competed the last part of a hat-trick for prospective landlords, particularly those near our office in Bromley in South-East London.

A little while ago we made public on You Tube our new video offering advice to people looking to become landlords and to let out one or more properties, below.

We followed this up with a blog post on the same subject, here.

Now, we have the hat-trick for new landlords completed with our new eBook, entitled So you want to be a Bromley landlord?

If you would like to receive a copy of this unique eBook and future similarly helpful emails, just email us at sam@edwardashdale.co.uk to receive it.

We won't be publishing our eBook anywhere else, though we will invite people to subscribe via email on our Facebook, Twitter and website.

We hope you enjoy it and if you have any questions or would like us to cover any additional points in this or any future communication, just let us know. We are, as always, here to help.

Best of all, why not drop by and ask us any questions you have in person? Our address is:

Edward Ashdale Estate Agents

58 Beckenham Lane

Bromley

BR2 0DQ

Or call: 0208 466 8445.

Facebook: www.facebook.com/Edward-Ashdale-Estate-Agents-204819466328261/?fref=ts

Twitter, @edwardashdale https://twitter.com/edwardashdale?lang=en-gb

Website: www.edwardashdale.com

You can view our earlier posts in our Index here. 

New landlord? Don't be nervous

We recently published a short video offering advice to new and prospective landlords. Sam Samuel talked about some considerations of importance to new landlords, from considering what property to purchase in the first place, to property maintenance and dealing with tenants.

After going over general points and potential risks, such as nuisance behaviour and rent arrears, Sam concludes that, with or without a managing agent such as Edward Ashdale, being a landlord can be a smooth-running and rewarding experience. 

However, Edward Ashdale are ready to help if an intermediary between landlord and tenant is needed to apply expertise and experience to ensure the letting out goes well and any emergencies are dealt with. In the case of a landlord with multiple tenants, such an arrangement could be even more valuable to ensure that the landlord has peace of mind that, whatever happens, any issues with his or her properties that arise are routinely dealt with effectively and efficiently.

You can view our earlier posts in our Index here.

Sam's Word 10: Doing anything for a sale

Sam's word

Some people will do anything for a sale. You may have heard that saying before. It is usually associated with traditional product sales and sales techniques.

Door to door salesmen. Big feet in the front door, wearing vulnerable people down over hours in their homes.

Used car salesmen. 'Clocked' cars that show a gentle 20,000 mileage where the true mileage is 100,000 plus. Claims of the superior reliability of the vehicle that barely groaned its way into the premises the day before. Have you ever seen the splendid Ealing comedy School For Scoundrels? You should. One of the high points is the sale of a terrible car by two of the shadiest salesmen you could ever meet, Dudley and Dunstan, resulting in Ian Carmichael losing out to Terry-Thomas with a young lady (temporarily, as it happens).

There are many more examples of people who will do anything, and often bad things, for a sale.

Well, we will join some of those people. The better ones. We will do anything for a sale. If it is within reason and if it is within our values and ethics. You may not hear the word ethics around estate agency too often, so here it is again. Ethics.

So, what is the 'sale' I am talking about? What do I mean by 'anything'?

The sale I am talking about isn't selling ourselves to get people's business, important though that is.

No, the sales I am talking about are the ones that we do on others behalf. So selling a property we've been instructed to sell for the best price and in the best interests of a home owner. Or having a property let for a landlord to the right tenants and not ones who will provide an unpleasant experience for that landlord.

The 'anything' that we will do starts with working hard. My staff and I put ourselves out, big time, to make a sale. We work a lot of hours and take calls round the clock. We take a proper look at a property we're to present. No five minutes in and out and a scrawl on the back of an envelope before someone types up some crude property details sheet and considers the job done. No unaccompanied viewings. No amateur photography, we use professionals.

The market for sales is strong as I write, so you can be lazy and sell properties. We don't like that at all. We're not like that at all. Our approach is the same, is as reliable, whether the market is hot or cold.

As a smaller, but very determined agency, we can't do everything at once. Yet here are some things we have done as part of our journey. We are the result of the bringing together of two agencies to form Edward Ashdale. That meant re-branding and merging IT resources, not a cheap or easy start. Since then, one of our offices, Bromley, has moved (not very far) to a better office where we can welcome people better.

We've developed a new website, and the one we have now will be replaced when we're ready with something even better. We've been blogging interesting writing (we hope) about our industry and our locality, and more. We've taken to the airwaves by appearing on Meridian Radio - thank you, DJ Alan King. We've taken a presence on social media sites Facebook and Twitter, and more unusually for estate agents, Tumblr. Why? Because we need to be heard, and if we're heard, so are the properties we have for sale or let. Certainly we network and leaflet and have good property details in our windows like many other agents. That is where many other estate agents give up, job done. Believe me, far fewer go the extra mile into these social media platforms, or onto You Tube, which we use and we are going to be using more and more from now on as well.

The anything we won't do for a sale is to exaggerate, lie, deceive or pretend that things are one way when they're another. I wrote in an earlier blog post about "the agencies who have a drive to fleece consumers unfairly". They do exist and we will never be one of them. So we work hard, we innovate, and we build our reputation that we are twenty first century estate agents with traditional values who are good to work with.

That way, we get to sleep at night.

Sam Samuel, MNAEA CRLM,  January 2015

You can view our earlier posts in our Index here.