JNP Partnership Lettings in High Wycombe move to New Office

The JNP Partnership has moved it's Residential Lettings Office from the sales office at 27 Crendon Street, High Wycombe to a self contained lettings office at 15 Crendon Street, High Wycombe, Buckinghamshire.

The original JNP lettings office was established in 2001 by Lettings Consultant Philip Suter FNAEA, MARLA who runs jml-property-insurance.co.uk and is still also employed as a part time lettings consultant to JNP.

Due to the increase in the letting business in the High Wycombe area, new premises were needed with more room for additional staff.

Dave Pering a Director of JNP said "Last year was without question the most difficult in the property market for a very long time and possibly ever and it is great that in 2009 JNP are rising to the challenge of the current economic climate by expanding, while many of our competitors are contracting".

He went onto say "the high quality and level of experience of the Partnership's staff was the key to its success in the current climate"

Staff are ARLA trained and regularly attend ARLA courses and meetings and JNP are members of ARLA and NALS (National Approved Letting Scheme). JNP offers 3 levels of letting services taking up credit search references and acting as an Introducer to HomeLet insurance products.

The new office's head is Associate Director Stephen Grace who has been with JNP for many years and as well as being experienced in residential lettings has been involved in JNP's sales operation at Hazlemere, Bucks. Stephen said "The move didn't just mean more space for the agents, but also more staff for the department. We've not only opened a new office, but we have also recently expanded our lettings team."

"The lettings market in High Wycombe grew strongly throughout 2008 and JNP's market share has grown substantially , it is a natural progression for us to open a stand-alone office giving our clients, both landlords and tenants the dedicated attention they deserve."

Philip Suter added" I am very pleased to see that the business has grown so well. When I started the JNP lettings department in late 2001 that was just one part time member of myself and I was also involved in the promotion of holiday home advertising via jmlvillas.com I was in fact only involved in lettings four days a week. We now have seven including accounts staff."

"Since the business was originally launched there has been a lot more time consuming legislation that agents have to deal with, the latest being the provision of Energy Performance Certificates. This means that lettings staff have to be well trained and keep one hundred per cent up to date with ARLA courses."

JNP has sales offices in Hazlemere, High Wycombe, Prestwood and Princes Risborough.

Property supplement returns to Irish Times

Thursday 22nd January and the first Property supplement in The Irish Times for 2009.

As a regular reader of the Thursday edition, I know that traditionally the property pages supplement often stopped in August and in December. Last week there was just one page in the main paper, mostly editorial.

This is certainly a sign of the bad Irish Property market, that is is suffering with many agents closing branches and cutting staff.

You can normally find approximately 5 pages of estate agents advertisements in this section. This week in the eight page supplement there is a half page ad for Sherry FitzGerald who are Ireland's largest group of estate agents.

There is an article entitled "Vendors should be wary about doing costly revamps" - They are advising that gone are the days when a home owner could spend a lot of money on their home doing it up, knowing they would get it all back (and more) when they sold. Instead they include a list on a check list saying if the decor is suspect, keep it simple, stark crisp and clean, a couple of coats of white paint will neutralise .

In another news report there is a property for sale in Sandycove (coastal area very close to Dublin itself) that was for sale at €2.25 million and has been reduced to €1.95 million.

It will be interesting to see in the coming weeks, whether this supplement continues and if more agents start advertising again. Agents these days will market propertis via the web, however there are still those people who prefer to see properties in a newspaper, be it a national like the Irish Times or a local paper.

With the fall of the £ sterling against the euro € and US dollar $, anyone selling in Ireland and moving to the UK to buy will find their euro will stretch much further, but despite a drop in Irish property prices, anyone moving from the UK with a weak £ will still find it expensive there.

Could the High Wycombe Woolworths site become the Red Lion Hotel again?

I read in The Guardian this week a feature entitled "Love hotels for lean times". The report is about hotels in places like Paris, Osaka Japan, New York, Barcelona, Vienna and other cities who have rooms that can be rented for just a few hours. The article is explaining that Valentines day is at a time when you are still paying off your credit card after Christmas and New Year expenditure. Here is a cheaper way of spending Valentines day (or part of it!).

So in the High Street High Wycombe stands the former Woolworths store that finally closed earlier this month. It had been there since 1969 and of course up until the early 1960's the famous Red Lion Hotel was there. The hotel’s iconic red lion statue, a major High Wycombe landmark, still stands on the colonnade outside the store.

Here is the answer to the empty building. Turn it back into a hotel again and as we are now in the credit crunch era take into account what these hotels in The Guardian article are doing. Well if that doesn't happen maybe Iceland might move in!

Whatever happens, if you are going travelling, even for a romantic weekend, don't forget your travel insurance. jml Insurance acts as introducers to Endsleigh, Essential Travel, Direct Travel, Devon Direct, Simple and Staysure Travel insurance. Insurance is one essential you can't afford to be without today.

Legal Protection Insurance is essential when you are letting out your property

Ever since we have been involved in letting out property, we have always made sure that we have Legal expenses insurance. Initially we took out policies offered by Letsure and more recently by HomeLet. This even applied if the tenant happened to be a company, instead of an individual or individuals

The tenants have to be properly vetted using a credit search process that is acceptable to the insurance company's underwriters and up till December 2008 had not experienced personally how the system worked. As a letting agent I had seen these types of policies in action, but not for a long time.

One of our tenants was not paying rent and depite contacting them about the situation, there was still no money forthcoming.

Soon a second month's rent would be due, so HomeLet was contacted and immediately they started the ball rolling. To speed up the process they used a mixture of phone, email, fax and post and even though it was only a few days before the Christmas break (and they only closed for Christmas Day and Boxing Day) they had their smooth operation up an running well.

They would have to wait till a tenant was two months in arrears before serving the appropriate legal notice and fortunately the rent was all paid up on time so no further action was required.

If that problems occurs again or another it is ceertainly most reassuring that they will act quickly and with the size of the UK's rental market that is so important today.

Appropriate Landlord's insurance is one essential you can't afford to be without today.

Landlords may have bought a bargain in the sales, but make sure they’re covered with their insurance

A sofa in a landlord’s propery gets damaged. They have to use their own money to replace it while the insurance is sorted, and then they only get one third of the value back. It doesn’t have to be this way according to HomeLet .

Apprarently if you have Landlord’s Full Contents insurance cover from HomeLet they give the landlord new for old cover. This means that there’s no need for them to make up the cost of new furnishings from their own pocket and can continue searching for bagains in the January sales.

They will also cover a Landlord for loss of rent, re-letting and repair costs If something serious like a flood happened they will cover the cost of the repairs and also cover the Landord for the loss of rent and re-letting costs for up to 30% of the amount they’re insured for.

Although most properties are letting quickly, sometimes there are gaps in between tenancies. The HomeLet people will cover them when the property’s empty and for up to 90 days, in between tenancies, with no restrictions!