September Round Up!

We've had a super busy September here at Applegate Lettings and we've lots to tell you about. At the start of the month we launched the first edition of Applegate Lettings magazine and the feedback we've received over the last few weeks has been nothing short of fantastic. A number of landlords have contacted us to advise that they never knew the implications of not registering bonds and were pleased that we had raised this as an issue in the magazine. Many tenants were also unaware that they should be cutting the grass and changing the light bulbs in their properties – we should note that so far they've all said that they’re more than happy to do this! The success of the magazine has made all of our hard work worthwhile, now we just need to get started on issue no. 2!

We welcomed a new member to the team in early September, Gabriella Abdelfatah, as our new Lettings Administrator & Accompanied Viewer. She is a key team member and is not only dealing with customers in the office but is visiting properties and showing potential viewers around and helping them with the application process. Gabriella has only been with the team for three weeks but has already settled in well and is thoroughly enjoying her new role.

We’re pleased to confirm that 60% of new properties placed on the market in September were from landlords who had previously used Applegate Lettings and had returned to use our services again. 20% of new properties were from existing landlord referrals and 78% of properties available for let with Applegate were let in the month of September.

Later in the month the whole Applegate team took themselves off to the Holmfirth Food & Drink Festival 2012 (22^nd – 23^rd September) for a couple of days of great food and drink. Well done to Maria Cotton and her hard working team for once again organising a superb event that we all look forward to every year. With over 70 local and regional food and drink stalls, hourly cookery demonstrations, live music and lots of entertainment we agreed that the seventh annual festival in Holmfirth town centre was the best yet and we’ll certainly be putting next year’s festival as a ‘save the date’ in the diary! What a fantastic excuse for a team outing!

Our new mailing list has gone live this month which ensures that all properties are automatically sent out weekly to applicants looking for new properties – they also have the option to unsubscribe themselves at any point which we find encourages people to sign up in the first place. We think it’s really fantastic and over 60 applicants have subscribed in the last 30 days alone so we must be doing something right!! Some landlords have even subscribed as they like to receive the weekly updates of what’s currently on the market. We are extremely proactive with these updates and also offer ‘House of the Week’ to our landlords. To subscribe to our properties mailing list, just give us a call or drop us a quick email and we'll add you to the list!

Finally, we've also introduced our thank you scheme. We value our existing clients recommending us to others and have decided that it’s time to thank them with a gift. From now on, when a recommendation is made by an existing client that results in a new tenancy, it will be rewarded with a bottle of champagne, a £20 Holmfirth beauty salon voucher or a Chocolate-lover’s hamper. New landlords will also receive a £125 set-up fee waiver when the Thank You card is produced at the initial valuation. With a monthly average of 70% of new landlords coming from recommendations by our existing clients we have a feeling we’ll be sending out quite a few thank you gifts!

We’ll let you know at the next round up!