The Local Expert…

By Rachel Ritson

A concept that has resonated for me throughout Property Academy sessions is that as high quality, full service Estate Agents, we want to be known as the ‘local expert’, offering relevant advice and support first, before we can expect something in return.

At Grisdales we have embraced this idea and one way we have achieved this is by hosting regular advice evenings, for the buyers, sellers, landlords and tenants in our local community. This has been very successful in terms of reinforcing our existing client relationships, as well as bringing a new audience through our door, who get a taster of our business before engaging our services.

In terms of lettings, our Investor Evenings have worked particularly well. We offer advice to new and existing landlords regarding the best areas to invest, potential returns and discussing all aspects of the process, along with Buy to Let mortgage advice from local advisors. Building those relationships at the advice evening before a potential landlord has even bought a property, has been very successful for us.  We have a number of landlords in our portfolio, who went on to buy with other agents and came back to Grisdales to use our lettings service, rather than our competitors’. We’ve now extended this onto our website, which includes an Investment Properties section, filtering out specific properties we believe are great buys, offering good yields.

Our recent ‘Dressed for Success’ event was a real winner for sellers. We invited a qualified House Doctor who gave hints and tips on decluttering and preparing your house for sale. We also had representation from a couple of local furnishing businesses and our own staff who discussed the importance of first impressions and preparing your property for the valuer’s photographs and the positive impact this can have. Targeting our pending market appraisals and recent unsold fall-throughs with this event was a great way to get back through the door with relevant conversation, and highlight how proactive we are as an agency.

Our next event will focus on first time buyers, many of whom are very daunted by the process and appreciative of advice and support. Our aim is to build those relationships at the start of their property-purchasing journey and keep them for life, eventually finding them their retirement home!

Short term gains from these events have been a significant number of instructions and new relationships from the evenings. Longer term, we’ve been drip-feeding the name of Grisdales as the local experts in our area and building trust and respect within the local community.