I’m back!
Well it’s been a long time since I’ve done a blog post so without further ado here we are - I’m making a comeback in property, namely estate agency. After having sold my estate agency business, XanderMatthew, in 2016 it’s been quite a journey! I first stuck in to buying high yielding properties. Well, they weren’t high-yielding to start with, but they had potential. If you remember I was able to add significant rental value to them by increasing the number of bedrooms (and therefore occupants) by moving the kitchen into the living room in most cases, adding up to 33% on to the rental figure. From 3beds to 4beds I found it didn’t necessarily impact the “per room” price.
This worked exceedingly well! As you may recall I had quite a number of these under my belt before people were asking me where I was sourcing these deals. Well, with agency contacts all over south London it wasn’t difficult to come by these kinds of deals, in fact I had so many offered to me I ran out of money to buy them all – thankfully willing investors were happy to pay me a sourcing fee in order to secure a property with potential at a good price. About the same time my business partner came up trumps with an amazing rent2rent portfolio where the seller just wanted out as quick as possible, leaving us with a break even on our investment in 2 months. Literally deal of a lifetime, it was great. Then we came across a rent2sa deal and decided to scale that. All was well until March of 2020 and the world shut down. No more rooms being let to foreigners because they all went back to their home country as quick as they could (well, they’d lost their jobs and educational facilities had been forcibly shut down) so we were left with empty serviced apartments and empty rooms – how the tide had changed quickly!!
Needless to say the years that followed were miserable and my enthusiasm for property was somewhat dampened to say the least. But here we are – having taken a well needed break from it all I’m back on the scene. I’m “Powered by EXP” as we say – I’m an independent estate agent covering south London, but I share workload with colleagues. It’s great to have a team to help out and above all it’s fantastic working alongside fellow estate agents that have decades of experience. Between the half dozen (give or take) of us working under EXP in South London we have over 100 years of experience between us – how many units do you think we’ve let/sold over the years, it’s a staggering amount!
So why EXP?
EXP allows me to run my business as I see fit, but give me ample back office support in order to facilitate the things that customers need most. Access to the property portals such as Rightmove and Zoopla, and of course a valuable CRM system for me to progress things on.
What does that mean for my customers?
It means they get all my experience, all my know how, all my abilities to be the best estate agent I can without being bogged down by admin that is effectively a waste of time. Admin is a must (just like the cookie consent button on every website apparently) but it has to be done to get the deal through. Having back office support means my hands are free to be calling customers wanting to book viewings, arranging valuations and so on – rather than calling up solicitors asking for an update.
When you are selling or letting through me there is value add…
Floor plans, professional photography, that’s a given – has been for 10 years now. Where I can add value is social media marketing. I network with a lot of property professionals and we can all agree on 1 thing – presentation is key. You will have heard that attention spans are on the decrease because of short form content (TikTok, YouTube reels) becoming more popular. The same is not untrue in property. You have a short window of opportunity for a property to catch a buyer’s eye. And maybe they aren’t even a buyer yet, but the presentation of your property makes them fall in love with it there and then, and an idea is born: let’s move – this is the one I want.
So you’ll be enjoying more regular emails from me, but if you’ve gone new age then do give me a follow on Instagram where you’ll see daily updates @downtosouthlondon
Of course if you did want a lettings or sales valuation with a view to a transaction then drop me a line at the usual address: jeroen@claphampropertyblog.com!
