2012 has been a huge year for Applegate Lettings and with so much going on, we can’t believe how quickly it’s flown by. With changes to almost every aspect of Applegate, looking back over the last year we know why we've been so busy!
The Applegate Team
The team has grown a lot over the last 12 months. We welcomed Laura Joy Everitt at the start of May who joined the team as a Lettings Administrator and a fantastic addition she has turned out to be. Laura has quickly become an invaluable member of staff and our existing and new clients have quickly formed a very positive relationship with her. She’s since had a promotion to Senior Lettings Administrator! We also joined forces with Rebecca Sutcliffe of Purple Berry Media in May 2012, who has provided us all with valuable media training and continuous support. We said hello and goodbye to Georgina Shaw who worked with Applegate over the summer before leaving to peruse her dream of being a teacher (and is still missed by the team!) and had another lovely year in the company of our Accounts Manager, Lynn Wray, who continues to keep everything in tip top shape. Finally we welcomed our newest member of the team, Gabriella Abdelfatah, in September. She joined us as a Lettings Administrator and Accompanied Viewer and instantly formed friendships from within the team and with clients. Our staffs Christmas party guest list keeps getting bigger and bigger!
Training Day
We've always stressed how important it is for team members to be qualified for their position and fully up to date on all the various legislation that is relevant to what we do here at Applegate Lettings. With this in mind we've had another training filled 12 months, with team members attending numerous events, including various ARLA (Association of Residential Letting Agents) training seminars, a two day visit to London to attend a course with ARMA (Association of Residential Managing Agents) and a ‘Forward Ladies’ event held in Sheffield (where our own M.D. Amy Wray met the delightful Claire Frisby from Look North!). Our services are only as good as the team providing them so making sure our staff are fully trained and up to date remains a priority and long may it continue!
Making Applegate More Sociable…..
As well as keeping our team members up to date, we realised that keeping our clients up to date was equally important. At the start of the year we already had our website (which even now we receive regular compliments on!) and a basic Facebook page but that was the extent of our on-line persona. When we started working with Purple Berry Media in May 2012, all of this changed. Working closely with their Creative Director, Rebecca Sutcliffe, we have expanded our on-line profile to include a Twitter account, an on-line blog and a much more active Facebook account! Our blog updates are becoming increasingly popular with regular updates relevant to both landlords and tenants: updates on legislation, general advice or just updates on what’s going on at the Applegate office, you never know when we may post something that’ll be of interest to you. With that in mind, we launched our RSS Feed Subscription service in August to allow subscribers to receive our latest updates straight to their inboxes! Add us to your feeds list now with this URL: http://applegatelettings.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default. We feel that by keeping our landlords and tenants as informed as possible we are going that extra mile and at Applegate Lettings that’s what we’re all about.
Our thank you scheme, also introduced in September, has also been a big hit with our clients. We value our existing clients recommending us to others and appreciate that over 70% of our new business each month comes from recommendations like these. We decided to reward these clients generosity of high praise with some generosity of our own in the form of Champagne, beauty salon vouchers and Chocolate Lovers’ hampers whenever a recommendation results in a new tenancy. We can honestly say it’s been very well received!!
Our on-line letting service, introduced to the Applegate Lettings website in October, has also proved rather popular. Landlords are able to upload their property details directly to our website, Rightmove, Zoopla, Find a Property, Prime Location and Applegate Lettings social media pages by uploading their photographs and description along with EPC for just £159.
Smells Like Team Spirit
We became the main sponsor for Marsden F.C. (www.pitchero.com/clubs/marsdenfc/) in the Summer having been approached by the manager Craig Waterworth to sponsor the team and as we are a local company with local values we were keen to support such a promising team. We have since watched them win many a match, got our own football shirts sporting the Applegate logo and even been photographed with the whole team for the Huddersfield Examiner!
The Terrible Two’s!
Applegate Lettings celebrated its’ second birthday on 1st July and we couldn't have been happier. On 1st July 2010, Applegate Lettings was born and we’re so proud of how much we have achieved in just two short years. A lot of hard work has gone into making Applegate Lettings the company it is today and it’s certainly a company that we’re incredibly proud of. Our team, our work ethic and our levels of customer service are all key to how we are where we are today. If we continue along this path, who knows where Applegate will be in another years’ time! To celebrate our birthday, we got to work on our very own Applegate Lettings magazine which was finally released in September. Feedback from our landlords and tenants show that here at Applegate Lettings, our levels of customer service are particularly revered – we pride ourselves on providing our landlords and tenants with as much information as possible and keeping our team up to date on current legislation to enable us to provide the best possible service. We believe that this magazine is taking our service to the next level – we wanted to use our expertise to create something that truly explains where we came from, where we’re going and what we’re all about at Applegate Lettings. Circulated for free to all of our landlords, tenants and any other interested parties, the magazine proved to be a hit with our original articles and interviews resulting in some fantastic feedback which really made all of our hard work feel worthwhile!
The Stats
And of course, it wouldn't be an Applegate Round Up without the statistics, only this time they’re for the entire year!
0 withdrawals.
On average over 2012, 69% of new business came from existing client referrals.
Over 85% of valuation appointments converted into placing their property on the market with Applegate.
A good year we think!
And now, some words from our Managing Director Amy Wray:
“I just want to thank everyone who has supported Applegate Lettings over the past two and a half years. It can be a daunting experience using a young company to deal with such a huge investment as a property and it is thanks to those who have that we are where we are today. I am confident we have proved to these initial supporters that we are extremely knowledgeable, we do deliver and we do provide high levels of customer service at all times.
I must also mention the team that I have working at Applegate Lettings. As a manager, I feel incredibly lucky to have such a dedicated team of people to work alongside me every day. There is not a day that goes by without me being immensely proud of just how much each team member cares about Applegate Lettings, our clients and the service that we provide. We also have a fabulous group of tradesmen and women who make our job that bit easier by visiting clients when they say they will, offering good prices and providing quality work. It can be hard when times are busy to remember those initial core values, but we promise to remain faithful to these and continue to provide both our landlords and tenants with an exceptional Applegate experience.”
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