Crucial Skills For A Successful Business

There has been a lot of publicity recently about Rishi Sunak’s attempt to make school leavers better at maths. I use maths in my job every single day but it is addition and subtraction and ratios and other simple mathematics, all of which I had learned to do by the time I left primary school.…

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What Does a Good Letting Business Look Like?

What Does a Good Letting Business Look Like?

We are achieving all time record prices for letting businesses at the moment but the buyers are becoming increasingly choosy about the sort of businesses that they want to buy. As a consequence, the price differential between the best letting businesses and the rest is wider than it has ever been. So, what constitutes a…

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Be Prepared for the Worst in Business

Be Prepared for the Worst in Business

Unfortunately, I am often asked to sell businesses for people who are seriously or terminally ill. I am also regularly asked to sell businesses by the relatives of people who have died. These situations are always harrowing to deal with but a recent case was particularly difficult. The owner of a small letting business passed…

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How To Make A Profit In A Downturn

How To Make A Profit In A Downturn

In last month’s article, I said that good agents can make money during a downturn in the housing market. In view of the economic damage caused by Liz Truss’s disastrous mini-Budget, it seems appropriate this month to cover this topic in much greater detail. Let’s take as an example an estate agency which generates income…

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Are Your Post-Covid Working Practices Correct?

A lot of working practices have changed forever as a result of Covid but more than three years after the pandemic started, the time has come when we must question whether all of these changes have been sensible. Let’s start with the issue of working from home. The arguments for and against this policy have…

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Beware False Prophets When Selling Your Business

Beware False Prophets when selling your business

Back in the 1980s, I used to write a regular property column for The Sunday Times. The article that attracted the most attention by far was entitled, “Beware False Prophets.” It was a warning to the public about how to avoid being caught out by estate agents who overvalue their property in order to gain…

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Is Your Letting Business More Compliant Than Purplebricks?

Is Your Letting Business More Compliant Than Purplebricks?

The recent problems at Purplebricks are a sharp reminder of how easy it is for letting agents to incur enormous fines for technical breaches of compliance rules. According to The Telegraph, Purplebricks could be facing costs of up to £30 million for mistakes made by their Letting Divisions which contributes less than 10% of their…

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What does the future hold for buy-to-let?

What does the future hold for buy-to-let?

The press has been full of doom-laden prophesies again about the future prospects for the buy-to-let market. Speaking both as a landlord and as a former letting agent, I don’t believe any of them. So why do I say this? Well, in short, I believe that whatever the problem is, the market will, given time,…

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A very busy time for Adam J Walker

The first quarter of 2021 has been very busy for Adam J Walker with a record number of sales being reported in areas right across the country. Despite the effects of the pandemic, sales of Estate and Letting Agencies have been very buoyant with many sales, especially of managed letting agencies, attracting strong competition. Broker…

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