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laurence meade

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my expertise in the industry

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Is et up in letting, in a small way, twenty five years ago. I soon learnt that estate agents were a problem for me and their effect on my activities had to be controlled. That is just business. Time wasting while they looked for a better offer, either the agent and or the seller, was just wasting my time. I was not prepared to loose time and money on solicitors and financial peoples' costs when I had to withdraw. That is history an no longer relevant to me. Now I am a seller.My flats are worth around the price of a good car! I tried an estate recently but his business costs on such a low cost item were absolutely ridiculous. Not his fault of course, just regulation and tax. He tried to rob me as well by creating a fictitious buyer who could not afford to going rate. My conclusion is that the only way to sell is online auction with guaranteed, "No nonsense". With a few more regulations even that will be not worth the trouble. My descendants certainly don't want them. With costs and all the tenants rights plus band C insulation they have a negative earnings potential. The freeholds belong to the flat owners. The Golden Goose of small residential property has vanished for ever.

From: laurence meade 10 November 2021 14:19 PM

I think most of us have worked out how little these government people know about most subjects vs the almost unstoppable desire to do important political "things". What is the point of responding to their nonsense? Probably better to just watch until they make a real screw up and then pounce on a new business opportunity which appears.

From: laurence meade 08 January 2018 13:52 PM

Any body who uses any agent has to know what they are doing. It is quite possible to happily use a bad agent if you know how to, "expertly put the boot in when needed" and get the transaction back on a good path. This has to be done in a firm and friendly way of course. The converse is also true. A good agent can make a mistake and again you need to be on the ball to help out stop your losses. There are other ways to reduce the stress. Never pay large deposits. It only takes a couple of pounds to legally secure a contract. You can walk away from that with little fear of retribution unless it is entirely your fault. There are many ways to part a seller from their true sale price. The most common (with fifty years experience) is selling your property to a friend of the agent and not telling you other buyers were available. If you do not have a lot of capital you can risk then stay away from auctions or at lease just go and watch a good few first. There are a lot of tricks that are possible to rig auctions and they are usually impossible to prove. As said, reviews are a difficult subject. Always understand who is complaining about what. Very few householders know much about anything technical in a house. The same goes for estate agents' staff. I have just been out to a house where the agent reported the shower head was not working. Utter rubbish. The hot water tank thermostat had failed and the hot water tank was at boiler temperature. The shower tap did not stand a chance but there is nothing wrong with it.

From: laurence meade 19 December 2017 10:47 AM

I have a number of flats. The first that I bought taught me the dark side of leasehold. After that I only bought flats where the respective management companies owned the land freehold. This is an ideal situation for managing blocks of flats. There are no unfair costs because the people concerned would be charging themselves. It also means that everyone has a hand in policy and major repairs and also means that a proper, single management company can be hired at a modest cost to do all the hard work properly as they have no other financial interest. Fortunately the management for my first purchase was able to buy out the freeholders and that had had a very positive effect on the whole development. I won't quote company names here but if any one has an idle moment search 'your freehold company' name against such terms as 'scams', 'unfair', 'court cases' and so on.

From: laurence meade 23 September 2017 19:22 PM

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