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OK, so this is a particularly bad picture, and in all my years as an estate agent I haven’t witnessed property damage even remotely close to what you see here, but… having a bad tenant can devastate your investment if things turn out for the worse.
We’ve prepared this short guide to give you some pointers if you ever find the need to evict a tenants.
Don’t take matters into your own hands – breathe deeply, relax (as much as you can) – make a promise to yourself that that you’ll use the law & logic, not anger and emotion.
Don’t go all macho and try to throw them out of the property yourself, or cut of the electric or gas.
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As professional letting agents in London, Proper Local Estate Agents have seen a number of first-time homebuyers. Our general rule of thumb is to make the process of buying your home for the first time as easy as possible. There are however many mistakes that can be made when viewing property on the Isle of Dogs or looking at property in east London. Here are some of the top mistakes and how to avoid them:
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It’s the question asked by many, many tenants – Why do I have pay so much money to the letting agent to secure a property?
It’s a fair question, and here’s a straightforward answer – other agents charge high tenant fees purely and simply because they can (at the moment).
Whereas other agents have looked at tenant and tenancy administration fees as a source of income, we’ve never believed that it should be like that. We believe that fees charged to tenants should be fair and commensurate with the work, or indeed underlying costs, actually involved.
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Lanterns Court consists of three highly desirable residential apartment buildings. Denison House, Cobalt Point and Trinity Tower. Denison House compromises 292 units, Cobalt Point 167 and Trinity Tower 54.
Developed by City & Docklands and completed in 2010 Lanterns Court is something of a Canary Wharf mainstay. Located just off Millharbour, under a 10 minute walk away from Canary Wharf, it is arguably one of Docklands’ most prestigious residential addresses.
The development benefits from 24 hour, 7 days per week concierge, whilst the residents’-only gymnasium is located beneath Cobalt Point.
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OK, so good marketing might not sell your house, but it will make the phone ring and the email enquiries come through. Good quality marketing is more important now than it ever has been, with the vast majority of buyers and tenants using the internet to conduct their property searches.
Like you, we spend lots of time looking through online portals such as Rightmove, Zoopla and Prime Location to keep up to date with new properties in the area. And again like you, we keep spotting the same properties still on the market for months at a time.
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So, what is it that a property owner actually wants from their estate or letting agent?
I was speaking with someone the other day who had worked at Purplebricks for 2 years. His experience from being there was that property owners DIDN’T want to use an online agent, they actually wanted to use a traditional estate agent, they just didn’t want to pay through the nose for it.
Jayne Dowle, who was kind enough to mention Proper Local a few weeks back in The Times, published this blog Money for old rope: take care when choosing an estate agent in The Spectator recently.
Jayne picks up on some interesting points.
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So, it would seem that I’m not the only person who is considering the question.
Only yesterday Jayne Dowle wrote the article “What it really costs to sell a property” in The Times. Jayne was kind enough to interview me earlier in the week on the subject of estate agents’ fees. We all have to acknowledge that estate agents’ fees make up a large part of moving costs, second only to stamp duty on the next purchase.
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So, in my last post What Is The Future Of Estate Agency? Part 1 I posed the rather valid question:
“Selling a four bedroom £2,000,000 house is not four times more expensive for an estate agent than selling a one bedroom £500,000 flat. So why is the fee four times higher?”
Can I be honest with you? I’ve been struggling with that question ever since I started in estate agency, over 10 years ago.
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So, undoubtedly, the world of estate agency is changing.
But.
How much has it really changed?
I find it easiest to picture it as a spectrum.
At one end we have the traditional (I’m not saying old-fashioned) estate agency, with their (increasingly nicer) offices on a High Street near you. They pride themselves, rightly, on their local knowledge. It’s a no sale, no fee promise. Fees are charged as a percentage of the sale or rental price achieved. They will be there for you all the way through the transaction, from initial valuation, through sale progression, to the day you handover the keys.
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- Wapping’s geographical area is defined by its borders with The Highway to the north, Limehouse to the east, St Katherine’s Dock to the west, and the Thames to the south. We suggest you don’t do too much experimentation with crossing the border to the south… you’ll get a bit wet!
- The name ‘Wapping’ was first recorded c.1220 and may have derived from words meaning ‘the settlement of Wæppa’s people’. Alternatively, it may have meant ‘marshy place’, via a connection with the Old English word wapol.
