This New Year we thought we'd do something a little different and write thank you's to people who've helped us with the business.
For this first review I'm starting at the top and saying a massive 'Thank you' to my favourite landlords Robert and Adele.
A bit of background
We have a lot of really great landlords but Robert and Adele will always be my favourites because they were my first and they took a massive leap of faith with an unknown, new agent simply because I ‘seemed like a nice person’ <I know – surprise!!>
I met Robert in May 2013 on a local business training course. I’d just opened the office and had no landlords, no tenants and no properties. I didn’t know he was a landlord but the next day he was giving me a tour of his Enfield properties and over the next two months we took over management of six of them.
Four years later Robert and Adele are still our clients and we also work for several of their family members and friends.
Why are they 5 star landlords?
I’d love to say it’s all been plain sailing but as you can imagine over five years we’ve had a few issues.
Most notably one sunny Sunday afternoon and the small matter of a kitchen fire. I remember calling Robert ‘Hello, how are you? I’m not really sure how to tell you this but I’ve just met with the fire brigade at one of your flats…….! '
His immediate response was to put the tenant in a local hotel for a couple of nights until we knew the score. Very calm and really very generous.
Robert and Adele work in an area of the market where you sometimes find sharper landlords and poorer quality properties, but they don’t fit this stereotype and I love dealing with them because:
- Their properties are in good condition.
- If we recommend repairs they are almost always approved and carried out promptly.
- When we give them a quote for work there’s no haggling over the cost. Yes they’ll question anything that looks high but they never ask us to call ‘Bodge it and Scarper’ because they’ll be cheaper.
- They generally only increase rents between tenancies rather than every year.
- They trust my opinion about tenants and even accepted one tenant who didn’t fit their usual criteria because I thought there was something about her. <Note she’s been a fabulous tenant ever since>.
- When they had to evict a tenant in order to sell the property she was living in, they returned her deposit early to help her secure somewhere new.
- When tenants are late with their rents or when their benefits are suspended for some random reason <sigh>, they take it in their stride because they understand their market.
Thank you Robert and Adele, and here’s to the next five years!
