One Bedroom Apartment For Rent | Cheltenham Festival

The Cheltenham Races get underway this year on the 15th of March. This is of course the event that puts Cheltenham on the map and one surely not to be missed.

Whether your a regular of new to the event there is always plenty of excitement to be had and money to be won (or lost).

The one thing you don't want all your money going on is overly expensive accommodation.

We are fortunate enough to be able to assist you with your requirements. This year we have a small number of exclusive one and two bedroom furnished apartments. If you are very quick you can snap up a real deal by reserving a one bedroom fully furnished high end apartment in the exclusive Montpellier-Lansdown area of the town. This for just £650 for the week!

Further details are available on request and internal photos will be uploaded during the next few days.

 

Bruce Fenton

Sales & Marketing Manager

Bruce@MustHavePads.com

tags: accommodation, cheltenham festival, cheltenham gold cup, cheltenham races

EPC Factual Marketing Requirements for Letting Agents

As a Lettings Manager based in Cheltenham I have done my best to keep up to date with the governments Green regulations such as the requirement for Energy Performance Certificates held against marketed properties. Not only that but we have ensured that some of the most vital data is displayed on our website to assist prospective tenants.

 

The whole issue of EPC documentation and its position in marketing has been an irritating one for most agents and landlords. We love to assist tenants however in the whole time this system has been in place I have only had two tenants take any interest in this report. The obvious conclusion is that in regards to the lettings industry the system is an unnecessary waste of agent time and client money. The law is however the law at the end of the day.

 

We were recently visited by two pleasant agents of the Trading Standards office to investigate our management of the EPC protocols and ensure we were compliant. Fortunately we were actually probably going beyond our requirement in some aspects and just meeting them in others. They informed us that many agents had not been so fortunate and now face fines for them or their clients (clients who would then likely sue the agent for failing to protect them).

 

So what is the actual requirement of a letting agent in respect to these documents?The letting agent must show every prospective tenant the full complete report prior to the completion of an initial viewing appointment. This can not be only the graph section; it must be the full completed report.

1. Though the requirement is actually that the Landlord is responsible for the production of this document to a prospective tenant the fact is that this is a part of the letting agents duty of care to the landlord. If the letting agent fails the landlord and causes them to be fined they are left open to being sued for the fine (and losing the client no doubt).

2. The letting agent is not required to display the results of an EPC on their website or on any website. The EPC does not have to be displayed with any form of marketing they use (this differs if a floorplan is displayed) . Though a graph can be placed on portals this is not required and does not meet the requirement of the law on proving an EPC.

3. The letting agent can have the complete document available online and then direct prospective tenants to a location where the entire document can be viewed electronically. The prospective tenant must agree that they are satisfied with this rather than seeing a hard copy.

4. The person carrying out the EPC evaluation must be correctly trained and registered. Further to this they must also log each EPC with ‘Landmark’ to make it legally valid. For this the pay a fixed fee to Landmark on each EPC.

5. The letting agent has a duty of care to the landlord to ensure each EPC has been registered with Landmark and is thus valid. The fact that many EPC assessments are now offered at around £40 suggests that most of them have never been registered. This means the person carrying them out is likely committing fraud.

6. EPC documents once registered with Landmark are valid for ten years or until the property has been modified in some significant way.

7. Though I must emphasise here that the possible fines involved are nearly always attributed to the landlord, it is to be made clear that in the majority of cases a landlord could successfully sue an agent if fined.

 

The bottom line of this is that there are three actions the letting agent should take from this point onwards. Firstly it is necessary to ensure that you hold a full and complete report for any EPC that has been carried out. Secondly each report should be checked with Landmark that it is registered and valid in all respects. Lastly in the morning when a negotiator grabs their keys they should also grab a pile of EPC documents to take out on the respective viewing appointments.

 

The good news is that you can save some time with marketing procedures by simply ditching the online display of these documents on various websites, should you feel that appropriate.

 

 

 

Bruce Fenton
Sales & Marketing Manager
Bruce@MustHavePads.com
07725 614828

tags: cheltenham, energy performance certificate, epc

Property To Rent in Montpellier Cheltenham

When one is considering the renting of a flat, house or luxury apartment in the Regency Cheltenham Spa area few areas touch Montpellier.

Where else in this region can you easily walk to the finest of eateries, such as the two Michelin star awarded ‘Le Champignon Sauvage’ and celebrity Chef Raymond Blanc’s much vaunted ‘Brasserie Blanc’.

For those less familiar with the town and wondering just what all the fuss is about let me walk you through the reasons Cheltonian’s are so very proud of this jewel in the regency crown.

If regency style period architecture floats your boat then a walk from Tivoli through Montpellier on towards Christchurch will keep you captivated.

From the grandest ten bedrooms Edwardian homes to blocks of high spec luxury apartments set in converted old Victorian town houses, this district really has it all.

If you’re looking for that special something for that special someone, then the unique designer stores and exclusive boutiques in the Montpellier strip will almost certainly have it.

Here we find offered up that special little something you would never find elsewhere. Of course whilst taking some retail therapy it would be almost rude not to try a fine wine in ‘Armagnac’ or the well known, and much loved, ‘Montpellier Wine Bar’. Be careful though lest before you know it you’re drawn into ‘Bar Ha Ha’ or the more traditionalists ‘Beehive Inn’ with festive tipples flowing freely!

Montpellier also boasts one of the town’s finest parks and on of its most beautiful flower gardens. This means in the summer there is tennis and other outdoor sport on offer for the health conscious. If you fancy something less strenuous then perhaps take a moment with some fine art provided by local artists at the ‘Gardens Gallery’ set right in the middle of the park near to the frequently used band stand.

By now I imagine your asking the two questions, how do I get to live in Montpellier, and just what are the insides of those regency facades actually like?

Well the pictures with this article are taken from a recently redeveloped site right in the centre of this most exclusive district.

No.1 Lypiatt Terrace is a selection of six sumptuous luxury apartments finished to an exceptionally high standard. Set on what is certainly one of the most well placed, and most peaceful, roads within this much-loved district. 

From here it is just a short walk to either the town centre or the popular village shops of Leckhampton and the heart of Montpellier’s charm is quite literally on your doorstep.

Property in this location of this standard does not hang around for long. Already half of the apartments are reserved for new tenants. Those remaining empty are available to view by request or for immediate occupancy if you are already sold on them. 

Of course each apartment already comes with the essential kitchen appliances as well as connections for satellite television and digital radio. 

Off road parking is included with each unit and use of the communal lawns is allowed for occupants.  

There is even one that benefits from it’s own private garden, which once the sun returns to our fair shores will be most appreciated I am sure.

High ceilings, Oak floors, shuttered windows, regency architecture, Canadian Black Walnut kitchens and a setting to inspire envy all combine to make these truly Must Have Pads.

Full details of the individual apartments are available to view via these three links Flat1 Flat2 or Flat3.

Bruce Fenton
Sales & Marketing Manager

Bruce@MustHavePads.com
07725 614828

tags: apartment, cheltenham lettings, flat, house, lettings montpellier, montpellier cheltenham, period property, property market, rental, to let

Is Your Property Empty Due to Supernatural Forces?

Although I am posting this as I found it to be rather amusing, it does bring to mind a property which my former lettings co-workers insisted was indeed haunted.

 

tags: cheltenham lettings agents, estate agents, letting, letting agent

Letting Agents Stroud - Complete List of Stroud Property Lettings Agents

 

Stroud offers a wide range of property types for letting purposes. Tenants looking to rent in Stroud can click the links below to local letting agents property listings.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Andrews Lettings and Management

Hamptons International

Hardcastles

Montgomery Lettings and Management

Parkers Estate Agents, Stroud

Perry Bishop and Chambers, Nailsworth - Lettings

Peter Joy Estate Agents

Sawyers

Steadfast Property Management

Surelet

The Property Centre


 

tags: letting agents stroud, lettings agents stroud, lettings stroud, letting stroud, rent stroud, stroud lettings, to let stroud

As the Sales and Marketing manager of a residential letting agent in Cheltenham this is a question I often ponder.

My background may be at the root of this as I in fact studied Business Information Technologies at university.

As well as this, factor in also that I run a popular personal website on consciousness studies, and of course run this popular property lettings Blog. Being fairly Internet savvy I tend to spot the errors being made by other companies as well as noticing those of our own agency.

Property lettings often seem to come down to a wild gamble on whether a visitor to Rightmove notices your £500 apartment of one of the dozens on with other agents. This is however only partly true. There are numerous other factors at play and opportunities for agents to stand out, especially in the e-business area of their company.

Having the brightest letting board colour or largest box in the local paper are not going to make the necessary tweaks to marketing strategies that most letting agents are seeking. To tackle changing times in the property markets agents have to think of the bigger picture. It is fact almost all advertising for myriad disparate industries are headed online fast. Newsaper, radio and television advertising are fading away into obscurity.

There is of course something to be said for paying a few of the major portal sites like Rightmove, Findaproperty or Propertyfinder. Two or three of these should easily pay for themselves but do closely monitor whether each is giving you value for money and drop any that are not. Alongside this however one should consider other options. There are some decent free portals out there like Zoomf, and others that are at least pretty cheap.

Perhaps most importantly the agent should look at his or her own home web site. At some point clients will [hopefully] reach that point and be ready to approach us depending on what they find there. Make the landing page welcoming and clear in how it directs the visitor toward using your expert services. Do not have some red and pink, flashing, twirling, monstrosity interspersed with irrelevant pictures and confusing text. Get a good site built and ensure you quality test the content properly by all means necessary (perhaps ask potential clients what they want to see).

Once you have the letting agent’s home page manifique it is merely a question of how to get it found. The web is my friend, a very big place indeed. There is somewhere in the region of 180,000,000+ unique Internet sites currently catalogued. Do not assume the old line from Field Of Dreams,"if you build it they will come...” will hold true here. Face facts that you’re initially an unknown in a huge crowd of nobodies all pushing toward the distant stage.

Check your Alexa rank regularly to see whether you have moved from rank 20,000,000 yet. Any site lower than this position is ignored as it is such trivial visitor numbers so as to be not measurable. Alexa offers interesting data reporting that can help in guiding and monitoring your efforts. Combined with some decent analytic software you will be ready to try new strategies and record results.

The next big issues are then those of Search Engine Optimisation, Paid Search Marketing and Quality Link Building. If you’re not very Internet savvy get yourself some expert consultants for your project, perhaps ShadowFaxMedia and myself. SEO is an in depth subject and most people involved in it realise its difficult to say what exactly is the winning formulae 100% of the time for every business website.

The bottom line is that not all potential customers enjoy property portals with their overwhelming lists of properties, many being duplicates or extremely similar and some even have been long since let. These customers will take to their search engine of choice be it Google, Yahoo or some other. They will then search for a product in the manner that they feel is most likely to find it [your product].

There are a number of factors that come into play as to whether your product or service appears on the first results page from a clients web search. I won't detail them here but interested parties can contact me for a chat via the Contact section of this site.

Ideally you want to be in position 1 for something uber relevant to your niche of the local or national markets. For example try this search in Google: 'luxury property to let in Cheltenham'.

You should see an article from this site in position 1 if you are searching from within the UK.

Try the Google search for the following term: 'lettings agents Cheltenham'

This brings up three of four different links (depending on time of day) leading back to to HMT Lettings whose site has been fully optimisex by myself. Right there on page 1 in Google!

There is far more detail to the story of a successful website, but obviously I am not looking to give away all my secrets here for free. Suffice to say that the vast majority of letting agents in the UK have so far failed to comprehend the e-business market or are just simply not sure how best to embrace it.

My advice to landlords is of course, "contact an agent whom has it already figured out!"

 

Bruce Fenton
Sales & Marketing Manager
Bruce@musthavepads.com

 07725 614828

tags: cheltenham lettings, cheltenham lettings agents, contemporary, cotswolds, hmt lettings, home, house, letting, letting agent cheltenham, lettings, lettings management, marketing, property blog, property market, seo

Part 1 – Choosing Your Letting Agent

Are you a Cheltenham based or perhaps out of town landlord with a town house, city flat, bungalow, barn conversion, country home or luxury apartment to let out on the Cheltenham or wider Gloucestershire property rentals market?

Cheltenham has a steady influx of prospective tenants looking to rent quality properties at the correct prices. As a lettings agent myself I have several years of experience in assisting tenants in finding a home to rent as well as in providing landlords with a suitable tenancy let for their key investment. Not only this but I am also a lifelong tenant and fully appreciate the desires and concerns of those looking to letting agencies to help them find the dream house or flat, or at least one free of ongoing annoying problems.

For the landlord with a house or flat to let and little knowledge of the rentals market or the main players in the local property industry residential lettings can be a daunting business. Choosing the right agent is paramount and with over 60 different agents operating in the town in can seem to be like a lettings lottery. Too many landlords will simply choose the biggest or the cheapest when in fact both are potentially terrible mistakes.

The letting agents with the most property may well struggle to offer you the service you expect as your property may not be overly valued by them. The letting agents offering the cheapest rates (typically around 8%) may rely on getting lots on quickly and therefore only needing to let the best of it to make profit whilst happily letting many new take on’s simply fall through the cracks. The key to deciding if such agents are right for you is to ask around about them and see what other landlords or tenants have made of their services.

Post the collapse of the real estate sales markets in Europe many shrewd minded individuals have looked at the residential lettings market as a stable business to delve into. In Cheltenham alone we have seen over a dozen new lettings agents open their doors during the last year. Some of these are reputable and have knowledgeable staff whilst others perhaps do not. There is also something to be said for an agent having a deeper knowledge of local trends and market peculiarities which tends to come from being well established and having good links with local businesses.

Talking to a well-established agent will provide insight into the direction in which pricing trends are headed as well as what types of property are in most demand in the various districts. They should know how best to market your property and which key features to highlight for an assured fast let. Not only that but they should have relationships with key recruiters in the area such as GCHQ or the NHS to name but two. 92% of rental income being attributed to your account rather than 88% may sound wonderful but a void period due to an agents laxidasical methods or simple lack of market knowledge could end up costing far more than the small percentile difference. We might summarise this as the 100% of nothing still being nothing scenario.

There is then a lot to be said for approaching a letting agent of a medium size with a solid history of renting homes in the town. Of course make sure they also use the major property portals such as Rightmove, Primelocation, Findaproperty and Globrix. You might be surprised to find they only use one of these or even none at all. As well as these e-considerations ask them what other marketing tools do they use that separates them from the pack. Of course always take a look at their own major marketing tool, the company web-site, assess whether you find it to be professionally constructed and user friendly

Last but not least consider the staff that you encounter. Do they seem to know what they are talking about and would you want to be their client whether as a landlord or as a tenant?


Bruce Fenton
Sales & Marketing Manager

 

Bruce@musthavepads.com

07725 614828

tags: apartment, bungalow, cheltenham, cheltenham lettings, cheltenham lettings agents, flat, gloucestershire, home, house, lettings management, property blog, property market, tewkesbury lettings, to let

Cheltenham's Custom Clean UK Professional Carpet Cleaners is 1st Choice For Rental PropertyCheltenham may have many proffesional cleaning companies but only one we recommend fully.

Many Cheltenham landlords may underestimate the importance of using a professional cleaner before putting a property on the lettings market, or indeed between lets. They do so at their own peril (void periods are painful).

 

Today we spoke to Richard from the highly recommended Cheltenham firm, Custom Clean. This local business covers a region that includes all of Gloucestershire, and for certain contracts even as far as Swindon, Birmingham and Bristol. We have been fortunate enough to be recommended him and now call him for many of our managed properties and most managed blocks communal areas.

 

Having worked alongside lettings agents in the county, he has seen first hand the results on property letting turn over that cleaning can make. I know myself that I have had clients walk straight out of a property based simply on it being slightly grubby, it is wrong to assume that clients can always see past this.

 

The most common requirement for correct property presentation for us is cleaning of carpets and a light clean of both kitchen and bathroom. The worry for clients is that when they see marks on a carpet, they may not come up and the landlord may not want to replace them. This can make a possible let fall through instantly. It is well worth paying out for cleaning as soon as possible rather than waiting until a let occurs, this can be an expensive false economy if it means clients will not offer on the property due to cleanliness worries.

 

It may be helpful here to give an idea of the time required, and indeed costs involved. A standard one bedroom flat would typically take about one and a half hours to clean, at a charge rate starting from just £55. This tends to go up in a fairly liner format with an extra half hour and additional £10 per further room. Of course some properties are more quirky and may require specialist services.

 

With the more specialist requirements such as deep cleans, required after building work or major refits in property, jobs have to be quoted on an individual basis. In such circumstance a test area can be worked on to show the final result to ensure the required standard is actually possible with the materials and tools to be used. This prevents and need for arguments after the fact.

 

Richard tells me that over the years he has come to the conclusion that the best way to halt arguments is to offer a guarantee for all his work. Any job he carries out comes with his two week promise to return if he has missed something agreed in the original price.

 

Which in three years has only actually happened twice!!!

 

If you are either a landlord, or a tenant about to vacate a property, Richard can be reached either via the contact information on his site or through the contact area here on Must Have Pads. Additionally feel free to contact us here to get a personal reference for his work, as I have seen it first hand more than once my self!

Bruce Fenton
Sales & Marketing Manager

 

Bruce@musthavepads.com

07725 614828

tags: cheltenham, cheltenham cleaners, cheltenham cleaning services, cheltenham lettings, cheltenham lettings agents, clean, cleaner, cleaning, cleaning services, custom clean, gloucestershire

There are many ways in which Cheltenham’s letting agents promote themselves to the local and national rental markets. The Echo newspaper is of course just one of them. There are currently some sixty different lettings firms that operate within the town, therefore its essential that an agent provides not only an exceptional service but also uses intelligent self-promotion methods.  If you really do offer a great service then it’s important to shout about it.

In my role as Sales & Marketing Manager I am constantly looking at new ways to attract both landlords and tenants to our service packages. Alongside this I am always monitoring the effectiveness of the existing methodologies. Traditionally an agent was reliant on their local newspaper, boards outside houses and the signage above their office door. Those days are certainly at an end; these are in fact the three least important aspects of property marketing today. Any agent who tells you otherwise is in my opinion sadly out of touch with reality.

In the current sales environment there is little doubt that effective e-marketing solutions are the greatest priority for both Estate Agents and Lettings Management companies. It would be corporate suicide to pull web-marketing campaigns and rely on the aforementioned old methods. The opposite does not hold true however, some firms have indeed pulled their newspaper adverts to cut back on costs, or at least drastically reduced them, yet find they perform almost as well as ever.

Personally I believe that all media forms can have relevant functions in the marketing mix of an effective promotional campaign. Recently we cut our advertising in the local rag down to a size that retains a function, yet makes it more cost effective. This is no knee jerk reaction on our part, unlike our friends in the estate agency market we are not suffering a downturn and as such are not pressured to cut advertising costs. The actions of our business are actually based on conversion tracking. Every let agreed is noted against the method of marketing that attracted that particular client. My tracking has shown that in the last quarter none of our successful property rentals has been thanks to the listings in the Echo.

There is a however a big difference between the way tenants and landlords run their search for an agent to can provide that which they require. A prospective tenant searching for a new property, at least initially, does not much care whom they get it from. First they want to see the majority of local stock available in the shortest time possible. Waiting for Thursday’s Property Finder to see a handful of random properties from the handful agents that use the paper is not a likely choice. Prospective tenants can simply type ‘Lettings Cheltenham’ into a Google search, followed by a quick browse through Rightmove.com, and by this method find almost all the agents and properties in the town.  For a landlord however, the first search is simply for names of reputable local agents to contact for information packs or meetings. This is where the newspaper can still be a useful first port of call for some. It’s for this reason alone that we do not pull our newspaper advertising completely.

Surprisingly though the Echo seems to be hell bent on forcing the hands of the local Lettings agents and putting them in a position where further cuts in advertising may yet occur. Recent promotions made available to Estate Agents, and to Estate Agents with lettings arms to the business, have not been made available to Lettings Agents. This has led to many agents cutting the size of their adverts, or temporarily pulling them altogether. The towns letting agents, with the director of the newspaper group, have now called meetings. I must be honest and say that I am hoping the meeting leads to agents pulling their adverts. If this is the case then the Echo will become redundant for the letting agencies and I will shift the expenditure into other mediums. I am far more able than many of my competitors in utilising modern marketing methodologies. Anyone can order a box in the Echo; not everyone fully comprehends the breadth of e-marketing solutions!

Bruce Fenton
Sales & Marketing Manager

 

Bruce@musthavepads.com
07725 614828

tags: cheltenham, cheltenham lettings, cheltenham lettings agents, estate agents, gloucestershire, lettings management, property blog, property market

Gloucestershire’s letting agents are currently experiencing soaring demand for good quality rental property. Thankfully the supply of property has so far been fed by the transfer of houses, flats and apartments from the more sluggish sales market. Whether based in the South of the county in towns such as Stroud, Tetbury, Nailsworth and Cirencester or in the northern towns of Cheltenham, Tewkesbury and Gloucester City, agents find themselves busier than ever.

The ability for supply to meet demand is however unlikely to last forever and already national statistics shows a steep increment in rental values and yields. In some areas of the country rent is up by as much as 12% compared with just one year ago. Many landlords are rubbing their hands together with glee as they see their rental yields climb toward a pleasing 6.5%, which is a high of over two years. Although Gloucestershire may not be quite at the top of these national statistics yet, there is little doubt that it will be within months. Actually the initial glut of sales properties appearing on the market actually brought down the rental on some properties during the last quarter of this year, so no doubt many local landlord will be pleased to here the trend is now set to reverse.

More than one property investor has begun to eye up the lettings market again, having put their chequebooks firmly back in their pockets as the slow down in the economy manifested with the credit crunch. The difficulty in getting buy-to-let mortgages brought about by the problems in the financial markets, and indeed doom filled predictions of property prices, had driven most of these folks away. The lower property prices and higher rents have meant though however that buy-to-let is starting to look desirable once more. In one recent survey 74% of landlords questioned stated they would buy more property if they spotted a good deal, both in terms of property price and supporting financial products.

Recent studies released by groups such as the Smith Institute, in regards to the lettings market in the future, have been extremely encouraging. They better my own predictions for the market significantly, the five years of significantly increased demand in the sector is depicted as being more likely to go on for anything up to twenty years. Supposedly by 2021 we will see one in every five new build homes going straight to the lettings market. In a turn around to previous criticism of buy-for-let investors, this area of the market will be seen as incredibly important and beneficial to us all in terms of the provision of necessary affordable housing.

Unlike the excessively steep curve of the rise in property purchase prices, rental rises have remained very much in line with income. This has meant that even those who could afford to buy have in many cases chosen to rent as it means they can enjoy a more fulfilling life style thanks to the extra cash left in their banks every month. It is wrong to assume that those who rent are forced to do so, over 25% of tenants are earning well over the national average salary at £30K+.

There is no doubt however that as the rental market becomes a greater matter of focus for government, and indeed for the average U.K. family considering a move, that a far greater emphasis will be put on professionalism. A combination of public outcry, and Government recognition of current failings, will mean new legislation in, and greater scrutiny of, the lettings process. I predict that cowboy agents and dishonest landlords will find themselves rapidly squeezed out of the market. Good riddance to them says us all.

Bruce Fenton
Sales & Marketing Manager

 

Bruce@musthavepads.com
07725 614828

 

tags: cheltenham, cheltenham lettings, cheltenham lettings agents, cheltnam lettings, cotswolds, estate agents, gloucester lettings, gloucestershire, hmt lettings, letting, lettings management, property blog, property market, rural, tewkesbury lettings, to-let, to let