4walls Blog

Today we have had the honour of being featured in "The Community Challenge" blog/club on ecademy. Penny Power asked us to write about our business journey over the last 6 years and how we have come to embrace "social media" and the web, illustrating how we use it with our businesses.

We thought we would share it with you here.

---

So what are we all about, now there hangs a question!

Well there's two of us: Nick Tadd and Vanessa Warwick ... ahem, G'day.

We met late in life so I suppose it's only right that we have a paragraph each to explain the story before we met - bring you "up to speed" so to speak. You might note that we have a fairly musical back ground, Vanessa being a VJ on MTV and me being appreciator of melody, not only that but film buffs to boot. Therefore, we thought it would be quite appropriate to interject lyrics and quotes throughout this piece to give a flavour to who and what we are ... let alone the reason behind it.

So without further ado ... enter stage right Mr Nick Tadd.



In the immortal words of The House of Pain  "Pack it up, pack it in, let me begin ..."

Quick potted history: After school and becoming a qualified fashion designer and an Art history buff I immediately dropped out and picked up a surf board. This was in the latter end of the 80's/ early 90's and I'm sure you recall a recession at that time. This did not bother me as I was too busy enjoying my 20's and living the beach life and, to afford it, I started designing surfboards (graphic/logo's etc), then windsurf boards which evolved into jet ski racing teams ... cool.  Living on a beach and being creative….

"Carpe diem. Seize the day, boys. Make your lives extraordinary." Dead Poets Society, 1989

I had no idea what a recession was, so I just carried on! With designing jet-ski racing teams came Motorsport, and between the early 90's and the early 2000's that's what I did, design racing cars ... not the engineering you understand but the graphic/s.

 

Ford motorsport (Rally cars), Janspeed (Nissan touring cars), Toms (Toyota touring cars, F3 and LeMans Gt1 cars) even a 2.5 litre Harley Davidson drag bike – jeez that was fast!

Read More...

When doing due diligence on a property, one of the things I always check is the level of crime in the area.

Crime has a serious impact on house prices and tenant demand, so it's important to understand what goes on in an area you are considering buying in. A female tenant is not going to rent your property if she feels afraid to walk home alone at night.

Areas with high levels of drug and alcohol-related crime are not going to attract good quality tenants, and house prices may be negatively impacted.

This article suggests that, because of the economic woes of this country, crime is on the increase, and will become increasingly an issue in society.

This recent article is worth noting.

U.K. hotspots for theft and burglary

Homes in London and Nottingham are the most likely in the UK to make a claim for theft or burglary on their home insurance, according to research from moneysupermarket.com.

Moneysupermarket analysed 2.6 million home insurance enquiries on the site last year and found London held five of the top 20 postcode districts most at risk of theft or burglary, followed closely by Nottingham which has four.

Beware citizens of Clapham and Hornsey

The research revealed SW11 in Clapham and N8 in Hornsey are the most risky postcode districts in London, and NG5 in Arnold and NG2 in West Bridgford claim the top spots for Nottingham - NG5 also takes the top spot overall, ranking it as the riskiest place to live.

Other postcode districts at high risk of theft and burglary include LE3 in Leicester as well as Ellesmere Port in Cheshire.

Julie Owens, head of home insurance at moneysupermarket.com commented "The research highlights a broad mix of areas across the North and South of the UK so it is clear that no matter where you live, there is always a risk you could become a victim of theft or burglary".

"With the UK in the midst of recession, and recent ABI statistics reporting that in the first quarter of 2009, the cost of burglary insurance claims topped £100 million, making it the most expensive quarter for five years."

Here are the percentage of home insurance policies claimed on over 12 months by area:

Arnold, Notts, 0.42%
Leicester, Leicestershire, 0.35%
West Bridgford, Notts, 0.33%
Ellesmere Port, Cheshire, 0.32%
Rounday, Leeds, 0.31%
Clapham, London, 0.31%
Sheffield, South Yorks, 0.29%
Hornsey, London, 0.28%
Croydon, Surrey, 0.28%
Hove, East Sussex, 0.28%
Sherwood, Notts, 0.27%
Bilborough, Notts, 0.26%
Beckenham, Kent, 0.25%
Manchester, Greater Manchester, 0.21%
Grossgates, Leeds, 0.25%
Walthamstow, London, 0.24%
Bristol, Avon, 0.24%
Fulham, London, 0.24%
Forest Hill, London, 0.24%
Maidenhead, Berks, 0.24%

Article ends.

We have a really healthy discussion on this topic going on over our our Property Tribes forum.

Richard Francis contributed the following invaluable advice:

1) Remove most of the concealing (above head height) shrubbery and hedging from the front of houses and ground-floor flats close to the road. Dark thick screens are a burglar's dream.

2) Don't leave your HD 50" TV / £10k hifi and home cinema etc in full view through a ground-floor window.

3) Get obviously good quality locks that are VISIBLE.

4) If you have a gate - make sure it closes behind you on a spring - you'd be amazed how many casual thieves are deterred by a shut gate - it's simple psychology - but works.

5) If you have a side passage get a gate and a light with an infra-red sensor (though try and avoid those 500W floods that you could play 5-a-side under - it really hacks off your neighbours not to mention running up a huge electricity bill.

6) If you really must have 'bling' on display - use bamboo blinds or similar to reduce visibility into rooms.

7) Encourage tenants not to do that really stupid thing when away for a holiday - leaving half-drawn curtains. Get a timer or two from IKEA and attach small lamps with low energy saving bulbs to them.

If you own a holiday let and have an on-line availability calendar, note that thieves are using these to work out when a property might be empty!

If you would like to connect with other serious and committed investors who share valuable insights like these, please join our Property Tribes forum and our off-line networking event in Guildford, Surrey.

Our next event is on Monday 26th October, and we have Chartered Surveyor Nick Dare coming to talk to us with a presentation entitled "Prospects for London and South East property markets". Nick is a real numbers man, so expect expert analysis!

Full details for our event can be found here.

 

I have just created a twitter identity for one of our holiday lets, SeaBreeze at Camber Sands, East Sussex. You can view/follow at SeaBreezeCamber

With holiday lets you can appeal to a global audience, which is why the web, being unrestricted by geography, is such an effective market place for these types of lettings.

Here are some other strategies that we have implemented for harnessing the power of the web for holiday let marketing, whether in the U.K. or abroad:

Create a Twitter identity and build up a following.

Create a blog about your holiday let, things to do in the area, days out, events, fine dining in the area, children's activities etc. Ask your guests to contribute stories to the blog and recommend the best restaurants and local attractions. Interview your guests about their holiday (for content).

Finding guests (using Twitter, blogging, leveraging other people's networks and marketplaces)

Marketing (make a video tour of your property and upload it to YouTube. Link from your blog, website, Twitter).

Testimonials - get people to write testimonials on your blog or website. Note:  Only 14% of people trust adverts, but 78% trust peer or community recommendations.

Create a Facebook identity.

Sell last minute availability on ebay.

Tweet late availability offers on Twitter.

Collect guests Twitter handles to keep connected with them.

Create a badge (widget) that other people can place on their social networking profiles to link back to your site.

Put "Follow Me on Twitter" , "Follow Me on Facebook" buttons on your website and blog.

There is some great information here which is applicable to setting up and running successful holiday lets that stand out from the crowd.

Join the discussion on this marketing topic on my Property Tribes forum here.

Read More...

For those of you still struggling to understand the benefits of social media engagement, I thought I would share with you a few stories of where sharing and networking led to unexpected results.



It seems to me that sharing inevitably creates a "win/win" situation for both parties!

Sharing # 1:

I have contributed over 1,000 posts to various property forums over the past few years, sharing my experience and knowledge, answering questions, and supporting new investors. A few weeks ago, I got a call from a man and the conversation went like this:

"Vanessa, I am so grateful to you. You have helped me more than you could ever know. I came across one of your posts on the Singing Pig forum about how to get money back from unscrupulous property clubs. I followed your advice to the letter, and today I received £30K back in deposits! I now want to spend that money with someone I trust, and I have read so much of your advice and experience on line, that I feel that person is you".

So, something that took me ten minutes to write three years ago has delivered me a client! Don't you just love the longeivity of the web and the law of increasing returns! Traditional marketing adheres to the law of diminishing returns.

Sharing # 2:

On our Twitter walk a few weeks ago, @surreylets met up with @jonniejensen. They have now collaborated together, and @jonniejensen has used @surreylets as a case study for an article about successful social media engagement. They have published this article in their respective networks, so now have enhanced visibility through those new networks. You can read the article here.

Sharing #3:

Speaking of Sally Asling of @surreylets, she very kindly wrote an unsolicited testimonial on our Property Tribes forum. In her testimonial, she described how we helped her generate £7K of business out of Twitter in four months. That testimonial has resulted in at least 10 people picking up the phone and asking us to help them with their social media and twitter strategies. Note that Sally attended one of our events for free and the information we shared at that event set her on the path to success. (We run our networking events monthly in Guildford and they can be found in the "Events" section of our Property Tribes forum).

Sharing #4:

One of the contributors to our forum, property tax expert, Stephen Fay, got in touch with us to say that, by posting advice on our forum, he was getting a lot of referrals and business. His exact words were "Sharing and advising about tax information on property forums has generated me more business than any form of traditional marketing". I also advocated him to a lot of people in our network who need tax advice. He now wants to take social media to the next level, and has employed Nick on his one day on-site social media business consultancy. Stephen said "I am using my marketing budget to invest in understanding social media as this is where business is happening". We agree. The marketing dept. is now closed, and you should be investing in your "findability on the web" department!

Sharing #5

A few years ago, we were offered an amazing property deal to purchase four luxury apartments in North London at a massive discount as the developer had made a mistake with his cash flow and got into a lot of financial bother. We were only able to get the deal if we purchased all four apartments. However, that was too risky to do, so we asked the developer if he would still consider the deal if we bought in three other people. He said yes. We then went to our close network of investors and invited them in on the deal. As a result, all four of us were able to acquire properties worth £450,000 for £350,000 (and remember, this was when the property market was healthy!). So everyone was a winner, us, our network, and the developer.

Sharing people and valuable information always leads to a win/win situation.

When people share, serendipity is ignited and great things happen - probably in ways you could never imagine.

What or who are you going to share today?

If you would like to join a new community of people sharing social media ideas and innovation, please join our new Social Media Tribes forum.