Our day promptly starts at 8.45am, everyone will sit down together and discuss the agenda of the day. We will talk about the previous days appointments with our valuer Hayley and discuss pressing issues to be dealt with immediately. Our branch manager Paul will then allocate jobs to the team to ensure all aspects of enquires are dealt with and then we can positively start the day knowing what we are doing. The first job of the day typically includes checking our mailbox for any enquires and dealing with anything that has been sent through from the night before. If any new properties have become live, we print off a window card and rearrange our window display to include it, do a mail-out to all matching applicants on area and price and finally contact any buyers we know would be interested in viewing the property and send them the details to encourage early viewings.

We would then go through all the previous days viewings, contacting the people who have been to see a property and asking for their general feedback. We view this as a priority of the day as it is so important our vendors and landlords know the feedback on their house and that they are kept updated throughout the process as it can be quite a stressful time for some people. We then come to look through our vendor and landlord checks for the day and make arrangements to follow up on any previous notes, for example any registers of interests who are to be contacted or any previous offers to be looked into before calling the vendor with the latest updates.

We aim to contact our vendors every two weeks to ensure the best relationship possible with open communication. After speaking with our vendors, we will then look at contacting our individual buyers to discuss their matching criteria, what they are looking for in a property and hopefully arrange some viewings for them. We do try to be as proactive as possible and always encourage our buyers to book in a viewing - sometimes people can be pleasantly surprised and may then consider something they thought they couldn’t consider before viewing a property. If a buyer has a property to sell, we will then encourage them to book in a free, no obligation valuation with Hayley for the best advice on their house too.

If there are any accompanied viewings arranged for the day we will attend them and do our best to sell the house in person. Upon returning to the office we deal with all email and telephone enquiries from buyers/tenants, registers of interests, vendors, surveyors and of course in office visits to the best of our abilities. A huge part of the job is of course negotiating! We aim to find the middle ground between the purchaser and the vendor, landlord and the tenant to ensure everyone reaches a happy outcome and people feel like they can buy/sellor rent with confidence in us as their agent. We can also arrange for any help for a purchaser and vendor where needed, including solicitor quotes, survey quotes and mortgage advice through our trusted partners who we know will make the sales process as smooth as possible, that’s why we recommend them!

Any agreed rental applications, move across to our property management team who oversee the application process and any properties that are sale agreed, move to our sales progression category where each negotiator personally deals with each house sale until exchange of contracts. We chase solicitors for weekly updates and then feed the latest update back to everyone involved. This gives continuity of service and are important factors when selling, buying or renting a property.

We aim to take the stress out of moving for everyone and always ensure to help in any way we can to achieve simple results for all.

Alex Weir – Sales Negotiator of PFK Estate Agency, Carlisle.