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After Boris’s announcement on Sunday of go to work, don’t go to work, work from home, but go to work, don’t go outside, but work from home or go to work, I wanted to give you an update of what is happening from a letting agent/estate agent point of view.
Obviously in a 10 minute speech, he could not cover all industries, but in the 51 page document issued yesterday, it still provided no clarification on what estate agents can or cannot do, so here is the official line that is published and we are still working to. These quotes are directed to you the public from the gov website.
“you should not invite unnecessary visitors into your home, including: property agents to carry out a market appraisal or take internal photographs or let people visit your property for viewings. “
I am aware of agents still carrying out face to face market appraisals and viewings, but this is not something that we will be doing until we are told we can do so, and not without the appropriate PPE, which we already have to protect our staff, and our clients. For me it's people before profit and health before wealth. Personally I would rather do as much as I can to keep as many people as safe as possible, than get an extra instruction to the market, but as with everything, information can be interpreted any way it's wanted to be.
So what can we do? We have adapted the same as a lot of other local businesses. We have further invested so that we can still deliver a top class service to our clients. All of our sales staff are now working, whereas most local agents have 1 or no people working right now, and we are conducting virtual market appraisals and virtual viewings.
Whilst in lockdown, we have registered over 100 new buyers still actively looking, conducted 104 virtual viewings, negotiated 18 offers, completed on 13 properties and on average we have achieved 100.05% of asking price against the properties we have sold. There are still plenty of buyers out there.
On the rental side, we have registered over 120 new applicants, and still conducting daily viewings and move ins on empty properties.
My personal opinion on the market, is this is like Christmas. In December there are very few new properties coming to market, but then January is our busiest month of the year for new instructions. If you or someone you know is looking to sell or rent their property, please get in touch.
Stay safe.
Anton