In Business do you prefer the telephone, face to face meetings or a combination of both? For a landlord who recently called into our shop it was important to him that he could visit us to discuss business.
A few weeks ago when I was out on an appraisal of a house in Houghton Regis I received an email from my colleague in our shop on Church St in Dunstable. A landlord had just called into the shop and wanted to talk to me about transferring his properties to the Belvoir Dunstable office.
Having called him on the telephone and discussed his requirements we then made an appointment for him to return at a later convenient date to meet in person in our shop. Little did I know at the time that he had 6 apartments in a sought after development in Dunstable called The Parklands and he wanted to transfer the management of all 6 from his existing agent to us.
The Parklands is a highly regarded gated development located next to the Grove Theatre and leisure centre in Dunstable. Prices for the apartments here have increased substantially in the last 12 months with 1 bedroom apartments now selling for upwards of £130,000 and 2 bedroom apartments with ensuites for around £160,000. This is partly due to demand from London buyers moving into the area, but also by landlords and investors because they are easily rented and in high demand.
Going back to our new landlord/investor with 6 apartments in The Parklands, why did he ask us to manage them? He could have sat at home and called around the agents he found listed on Rightmove and asked how much their fees were as many do, but he is a business man and believes in meeting people. This gives him a true feeling and confidence in the people he will be doing business with. He could sit down in front of me and discuss the area, how Dunstable was improving, what sort of tenants were looking for properties and maybe having spoken to a true ‘local’ property expert and not someone on the end of the phone he might decide to invest in more properties in the area.
Many landlords forget that they are handing over an asset that could be worth hundreds of thousands of pounds to someone to look after. Wouldn’t you want to be able to drop into the shop or office of the company you have engaged to look after your asset and quite possibly your pension fund and meet the person in charge to talk about the local property market and your own property?
This landlord has 6 apartments he has now passed to us to care and look after and they are worth in excess of three quarters of a million pounds. He wants to know the person who will be looking after them which is why on the day he came into our shop he walked through Dunstable to meet the agents who specialise in lettings in the area and didn’t pick up the telephone.
