estate agents
Why You Need Cyber Insurance
Almost every day I read a story about an organization that has been the victim of a cyber-attack. One of the UKs largest conveyancing solicitors suffered such a devastating attack last year that it virtually closed down their business for many weeks. One of the London boroughs was unable to provide property search information to…
Read MoreThe ULEZ Threat
I keep reading articles about the desperate shortage of rental accommodation in London and the spiralling rents. This is of course caused by the usual issues. Increased mortgage costs for landlords, new compliance legislation, savage fines for minor breaches of the compliance rules, the ending of Section 21 and the huge cost of complying with…
Read MoreThe Impact of Higher Interest Rates
Interest rates are now at their highest rate for 15 years and the whole country is reeling from the impact. So far, letting agents have been relatively unaffected. Some landlords are leaving the sector because they cannot afford the increase in their mortgage payments but increased rents have more than compensated for the lost fee…
Read MoreWhose Side Is Your Agent On?
A few years ago we saw a spate of estate agencies charging fees to their buyers rather than to their sellers. They were able to win instructions by offering to sell houses free of charge but of course this wasn’t really true because the buyers would simply deduct the agent’s fee from the price that…
Read MoreHow To Make A Profit In A Downturn
In last month’s article, I said that good agents can make money during a downturn in the housing market. In view of the economic damage caused by Liz Truss’s disastrous mini-Budget, it seems appropriate this month to cover this topic in much greater detail. Let’s take as an example an estate agency which generates income…
Read MoreWhat Next For The Housing Market?
A week is a long time in politics and a month is a very long time for a columnist. I can hardly believe that only last month I wrote a piece about how positive the outlook was for the housing market following Covid. Since then, dark clouds have returned with a vengeance. The war in…
Read MoreWhat Will Be The Long-term Impact Of COVID On The Housing Market?
Now that the Negotiator magazine is back in print again, I must write my monthly article a couple of weeks before it is published. This makes me a little nervous about covering fast-moving topics but this month I am going to make an exception because this article is too important to delay. After two years…
Read MoreAre Estate Agents Undervalued?
House prices go up and down all the time but usually the fluctuations are quite gentle. In most years, the change is just a few percent up or down. A boom such as we are having right now means a 10% rise and a crash such as the one that followed the 2008/2009 financial crisis…
Read MoreProtecting Your Business from COVID
The property market as a whole has survived Covid very well so far. However, that is not to say that some individuals have not been hit very hard by it. We dealt with a tragic case where a business had to be sold due to the death of the proprietor and I have other clients…
Read MoreDon’t allow technology to become your enemy
My article last month about how companies are using Covid as an excuse to reduce service levels generated quite a few responses. So this month I am going to develop this theme further. Last month, I dealt with things that companies are doing or not doing that have clearly got nothing to do with Covid.…
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