18 reasons why your business needs a website
#1 We’ve come a long way from 1991. That’s the year when the first website went live – 27 years ago. Things have moved on greatly since then. John Major was the UK Prime Minister and Bryan Adams broke all music records with 16 weeks at the top of the charts. Some things haven’t changed […]
My war with bad broadband – or why you need Google WiFi
My war with bad broadband was beginning to irritate me. In a new build, with fibre optic cabling, speeds should be fast – they are now with Google WiFi. Watch more below.
How a regular property blog can win you business
I’ve run Get Pro Copy Ltd since 2015, constantly adding blog posts, as I knew this would lead to success. It has. I then realised that much of the property industry is beginning to recognise that a regular property blog post increases web traffic and leads to sales, longer term, so this venture was born. Get […]
Making money out of property development
20 years ago, we were all encouraged to become property developers on tv programmes by the likes of Sarah Beeny and Martin Roberts on “Property Ladder” and “Homes under the Hammer”, which always seemed to be set in Stoke? Since then, I think the high yields of property developing have evaporated. As Farrell Walton estate […]
The 5 things I’d like to see on new developments in 2018
The diesel engine may soon enter the footnotes of history as car manufacturers cease production, but will property follow suit? Brighton elected a Green MP, Caroline Lucas, and I’m pretty sure she won’t be representing the party alone in future elections as the world wakes up to global warming and environmental damage. Don’t get me […]
Is a home office a worthwhile investment?
A garden home office appeals hugely to me. I think it harks back to caveman times when man could colonise rock fissures and perhaps now modern man needs a man shed, a man den or a pod. Not just males either – women too. There’s been an inexorable rise in self-employment and freelance work and […]
Why do developers insist on building garages?
I’ll hold my hand up now and say I used to have an obsessive habit of wanting to put my cars to bed in garages. I think my mind was programmed to behave this way because I’d lived in Oldham in the late 80s and 90s when car theft or vandalism was a weekly event […]
Design Access Statements – help for architects
Bestriding Thorpe Cloud in Derbyshire last year, fending off a nose bleed after hitting heights unheard of in coastal Norfolk, I took a call. Out of breath, I chatted social media and content with an architect. The long and short of it was that I was asked to optimise and improve the content of his […]
Would you choose timber-framed or brick and block for new homes?
Brick and block or timber-framed? I pose this question as today, out walking, this very question was debated between myself and a neighbour. I’d not realised as we’d bought a home that had been first-fitted that ours (and the rest of Persimmon Phase One) was timber-framed and the new builds leaping from muddy foundations opposite […]
Are micro-homes the answer to the housing crisis?
A micro-home is defined as having a living space of below 37 square metres – or the size of a tube carriage. To be honest, I could live in a home that size. I think the key with a micro-home, as with caravans, is design. Having been the proud owner of a touring caravan for […]
Area guides for estate agents – prove you know your stuff
Area guides for estate agents – prove you know your stuff As leading Great Yarmouth estate agents, we know this part of east Norfolk well and what surprises many visitors in the spring and summer months is just how affordable the area is. The most expensive part of the borough lies 4 miles inland: Burgh […]
Will Alexa replace humans in the property industry?
I’ve switched gas and electricity suppliers in the past month in our new build from British Gas to EDF, mainly, sadly, to witness a Smart Home meter from Netatmo (supplied and fitted free) along with a free Amazon Echo. They’re both impressive pieces of kit, and I think if I’d forked out £250 for them, […]
People sell property with people they like
I work alongside a fair few estate agents and having been in the industry myself for a couple of years, I totally understand the holy grail of trying to acquire listings. If you operate a no sale no fee model, you have to get vendors selling homes and then hoping that they pick you and […]
“Room” – not a Room with a View, except a skylight
Last night, I streamed the film “Room” on Amazon Prime. I’d intended to watch this at the cinema a few years ago but never got round to it. The basic premise is that Joy, the lead character was kidnapped at 17 and held captive in a “room” in a garden for 7 years, with her […]
Local property expert – do you want to become one?
The term Local Property Expert or LPEs have become synonymous with online estate agencies in recent years, mainly due to the fact that they’re local and have some insights into the property market locally, we’re all led to believe. It’s a curious term, because the traditional high street estate agents with MNAE and RICs behind their […]