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Local Tunbridge Wells resident Jo Hargreaves offers an unusual take on the usual interior design service. Jo firmly believes that interior design should be open to all not a luxury, a concept that we fully support at Belvoir, and so she has deliberately set affordable prices for her range of services e.g. £45 per hour for a consultation. We met Jo when she worked with one of our landlords to prepare a basement flat for rental. A potentially tricky property that could be viewed as dark and unappealing, with a front room below pavement level, had been turned into a bright and welcoming space with careful use of colour and window dressings. Jo had in fact worked with our landlord on previous jobs including a full house which she prepared for sale and he gave us a glowing review of her skills:
“Jo is very creative, professional, practical, pragmatic & easy to work with. Jo is happy to work to any budget & still get the required look, her fees are very reasonable & provide a great return on investment as her work adds real value to the finished result as you will have seen.
If you have landlords like me who struggle with colour & finish etc & want their properties to present well to get a good rent & good tenants, I suggest you pass them Jo’s contact details. As my remaining rental properties become available, I will hand them over to Jo to ‘sort’.”
Needless to say, with the Farrow & Ball interior of the basement flat being on-trend and looking welcoming as well as bright, the flat let before Belvoir had time to put the video tour out on social media! Making life easy for our landlord and for Belvoir as the letting agent. If he had desired, the landlord could have taken the rental to sealed bids to push the rent up, as well as select between all interested applicants, but that wasn’t his intention – he simply wanted the flat looking it’s best and in great shape for a good applicant to move into.
Jo’’s passion for interiors started with a school work experience job in local store Kotiki Interiors on Grove Hill Road when she was 15. But it wasn’t until 25 years later, after a successful career within the Recruitment Industry and having renovated her own properties during this time, that she realised her dream and embarked on an Open University course in Interior Design and she hasn’t looked back since. Her business is built on word of mouth recommendations and repeat business.
It’s not just preparation to rent that a good interior designer can help with. Jo Hargreaves Interior Design also offers a home staging service and she has an enviable partner in this. Her brother owns a furniture company – the popular ‘Chests & Drawers’ in Southborough who offer made to measure furniture, as well as refurbished items and a spray-painting service which transforms pieces, including kitchens. Jo stages properties with carefully chosen items of furniture and she has an eye for home accessories which she sources from a variety of places. We discussed our mutual love of ‘Homesense’ for example! At Belvoir we have seen the impact of staging when we have seen properties rent in under a week that have previously been on the market for months attracting no viewings. Jo agrees, saying she has seen a surge in interest for properties after staging and vendors achieve full asking price, even above asking. It’s selling a dream and helps those renters or buyers who can’t easily visualise a space with furniture and accessories, see what can be achieved, making a property identifiably homely, chic and practical.
Jo is a big believer in the power of texture in interiors. She used texture as a key design element in a project for Heathrow Airport converting a bland training room into a lounge area for the Heads of Heathrow. Jo also won an NHS contract converting an old NHS office building into a SARC (Sexual Assault Referral Centre) in Yeovil and told us how important it is in these spaces to choose textures that feel warm, and provide comfort and reassurance whilst also ensuring the integrity of DNA. Colour is vital to providing a homely environment which is inviting, soothing and restful.
Colour choices are something Jo loves to advise on, offering an in-home colour consultation to residential clients from £65 – this will certainly be a service we would recommend to new landlords buying their first buy-to-let property as well as those with a whole portfolio having seen first-hand the impact on the rental process. Canny landlords are starting to see the benefit to their rental property returns of employing the professional skills of an interior designer or home staging specialist. A relatively small outlay on interior design advice, in the overall expense of being a property owner, could be the difference between choosing between tenants or having no choice and an uncertain length of void period versus no void period – factors which directly impact your return on investment.
Contact Jo Hargreaves Interiors at jhinteriordesign@outlook.com 07971 495141
Please contact Belvoir for information on our current buy-to-let investment opportunities and advice on making the most of your investment property.
Email: tunbridgewells@belvoir.co.uk Telephone: 01892 615333
