Building on Solid Foundations: Letting and Management Part Two | PVP S1E07

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The Property Voice Podcast - Series 1: Episode 7

 

The area of letting and management is one of the biggest that we as landlord investors will encounter in our investment property lifecycle. Following on from last week, Richard shares some of his stories, both good and bad with regard to agents and tenants. We also have a chat with Tim Leffler, who is our letting agent subject matter expert this week just to balance things up a little too.

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Resources mentioned

• Property Investor Toolkit – here is the book link on amazon.co.uk & amazon.com in case you would like to get yourself a copy to accompany this series
• Mentioned by Tim Leffler: ARLA & RICS
• Your Voice – This week comes in the form of an interview with Tim Leffler, the Lettings Manager with Hill & Clark in Boston and can also be found over at The Property Hub - Tim Wragby (Leffler) and on Twitter - Tim Wragby (Leffler)
• Shout Out – Sidekick is an email tracking tool...that in addition to working with gmail also has an Outlook plugin...keep tabs on emails opened and forwarded more easily with this free app and plugin

Today’s must do’s

1. Check out what a professional letting agent can do for you, reach Tim Leffler at Hill & Clark and ask him about their qualifications, registrations & systems
2. Subscribe to the show in iTunes…and while you are at it please help us to spread the word by telling all your friends too! If you enjoy the show, a review would be very much appreciated 🙂
3. Send in your property stories, questions or moans to podcast@thepropertyvoice.net and we will try and feature YOU on the show too!
4. If you would like to, grab yourself a copy of the book: Property Investor Toolkit (link in Resources above)

Get talking!

• Join in the discussion, either here in the comments section below or anywhere else on the Blog
• Start a conversation on Twitter with us @PropertyVoiceUK or on our Facebook page

Transcription of the show

Richard: Hello there and welcome to another episode of The Property Voice Podcast. My name as ever, is Richard Brown and as always it’s a pleasure to have you join me on the show today. Now, I’m recording this episode after to the results of the general election. Of course, I know now as you do that the conservative party secured a slender majority and were elected into the government. And I guess, that, on the positive side, it probably adds an element of continuity and probably the fact that it’s a slender majority rather than a substantial one, you know sort of keep things within a tight reign perhaps, over the next five years;   because they’re going to need no rebellions from back-benchers etc to get the policies through.

So, I guess on the plus side: stability and nothing too outlandish, I can say. But on the negative, I guess there were some aspects of some of the other parties which were more progressive, certainly on the supply side of housing and certainly, on the area of tenant protection, which probably a lot of people may have been disappointed it hasn’t come through. So, you know, I don’t have a strong view on the subject.

I guess there are landlord investors who are breathing a sigh of relief at least to the whole prospect of rent controls, which was a significant Labour party policy is not coming into place. So, it’s a little less worrying on that side of it. Not sure if we’ve influenced a part of the election in its own right but it was certainly topical within the housing community, at least. So, there we go.

On today’s show, it’s a bit of a ‘part two’ or a ‘take two’, and it’s a bit of a running theme actually throughout the course of the next half an hour.  Casa will explain what’s coming up.

But it’s a Part Two, as I mentioned because last week, we had “Lettings and Management” in my chart show and the interview with Damien Fogg. At the same time I was reaching out to Damien, I also reached out to Tim Leffler, who is a letting agent and who works for a letting agency. He’s very professional and very kind enough to lend me his time as a subject-matter-expert. We have a piece from him that I’d like to share with you on today’s show, and because the content is so good (and as always, as it came from Tim, and I’ve dealt with him before) I really want to feature it in the show. So, I decided to have a Part Two on the subject of Lettings and Management, and I’m going to be talking about “Two Good and Two Bad”, which I have flagrantly stolen from Match of the Day 2 (crediting the source however), as a feature from my property chatter segment. So, anyway, without further ado, I just want to say, Casa, how are you? Welcome to the show and please why don’t you share with us what the listeners can look forward to over the next half an hour…

Casa: Hi Richard! It’s great to be here and I’m looking forward to a slightly different format in today’s show. I know you are going to share some of your stories of agents and tenants in Property Chatter. Then as you mentioned, we’ll have a quick-fire interview with Tim Leffler this week, who is a subject-matter-expert in the area of lettings and management. This follows on nicely from Damien’s interview last week, promoting the self-management route, as Tim works for a lettings agency. Whilst, we don’t have any reviews to share this week, which is not because there aren’t any. In fact they are accumulating nicely and our podcast was featured into the iTunes’ New and Noteworthy section this week. So we must be doing something right!

Finally, we have a technical resource in the Shout-out segment. But right now Richard, let’s get back to you for Property Chatter.

Property Chatter

Richard: Ok, thank you Casa, for that. Really appreciate that introduction to the show. It’s really good to hear from you. And yes I mentioned, in the sort of introduction today that this is kind of a Part 2.

Lettings and Management is a big subject and obviously buying and selling property, certainly for long-term buy-to-let is only is a small part, actually of the life-cycle of property management. And in fact the whole part of the lettings component is something that repeats, time and time again. And if we have a property for a period of time, say 10 or 20 years (could be longer actually on occasions) we’re probably going to go through a number of issues in terms of letting and re-letting, management and maintenance issues and that sort of thing. By far, actually of the biggest component of being a property investor who is investing in a long-term buy-to-let is one of the most significant aspects of what we’re talking about.

So, obviously, I mentioned that I have the subject-matter-expert interview with Tim Leffler and there were such good content in that, that we really want to feature it in this segment. So what I thought, I would do is to share my personal experience with agents and tenants, in the area of lettings and management. Just to give you a little bit of insight and context to the subject. And I’ve come up with a catchy phrase of “Two Good and Two Bad”. So that’s two good stories and two bad stories with regard to letting agents and tenants.

Now, let’s start with the agents. Perhaps, I’m setting the scene for the theme a little bit here. But the first story is going to be a bad one, unfortunately. So, let’s get the bad news out of the way, first. Tim is actually connected in this part of the story, but you will hear it in a very positive way. So, I have a property in the Boston area and I went to a letting agent there and as Tim actually mentions in his interview, I spoke to him, personally and he impressed me a lot, actually. And he influenced me with that property to go with that letting agency. But probably, hearing from somebody’s experience, I subsequently had; a lot of what happened well there was actually down to him as an individual. That’s actually one of the take-aways from this story. You know if you’re relying on an individual, it’s perhaps a little bit risky and I’ll explain. Just to put it into context, we’re talking about from an agent’s point of view. After Tim, moved on in fact, there was no problem when Tim was looking after my property, everything ran like clockwork and he gave great advice and he was very proactive but Tim actually took another position with another agency in the town. And as a result, (it was during a tenancy) and it wasn’t convenient and I think I was in the contract anyway, to stay with the letting agency. So, I just stayed with that agent – no: to put it right, very quickly after Tim moved on, I had a change of tenancy, which was too early really to transfer over to Tim, just to get you the right details and context. But needless to say, the agent found a tenant quite quickly and they moved in.

From the tenant’s point of view, it actually wasn’t the problem. They were good tenants. They wanted to stay for a long time. In fact, they asked me about keeping chickens (which was good thing, because they are asking me, at least) but I guess anyone wanting to keep chickens, possibly wants to stay for a while. So that for me is quite attractive. So, I got to digress to my point, which was the agent (and unbeknown to me) had not issued or had not protected the deposit, in very simple terms and indeed have not issued prescribed information in a timely manner.

Now, this is a very serious issue with regard to landlord-and-tenant issues, and I think I alluded in the last episode that indeed there are consequences on to the landlord of that type of action failing. So for example, not protecting the deposit and not issuing prescribed information can lead to a fine. And I think, it’s up to three times the extent of the deposit. So, it quite a substantial penalty just for not complying with the timing. Then, if there were any problems with that particular tenancy and I needed to go to court let’s say, enforce Section 21 Notice and get my property back. At the end of the 6-month or 12-month period as appropriate, I wouldn’t be able to enforce that without the adequate deposit protection being in place. And I would need to give the money back to the tenant and then start again from that point of view. So it delays things, I wouldn’t have the deposit protection and obviously, it damages my protection. So, that wasn’t very good. I think the other thing that transpired is what really alerted me to the problem in actual fact, was the tenant themselves. Because they were getting more and more frustrated with the agent, and I didn’t know. I didn’t know what was going on. Apparently, there were a range of repair and maintenance issues that were being reported from a fairly early stage and the tenants were literally told, “We don’t want to bother the landlord with that information” or “That’s a minor issue and we’re not going to bother with that”. And I’m talking about a radiator that wasn’t working in the child’s bedroom. I’m talking about a bath plug not working, a shower not working. I didn’t know about any of these. When actually I got a call from a plumber (I’m not sure how he got my number. I think he might have been connected to Tim but I’m not sure). So this plumber contacted me. He said, “I just wanted to let you know that I’m dealing with the tenants in your property and they asked me personally rather than the agency because they’re fed up with the agent. And to cut the long story short, your heating is not working. And your tenants have no heat and no hot water and it’s been the same for a couple of days. The tenants have tried to escalate this to the letting agent but they’re not getting any response.”

So as result of this, I got the tenant’s contact information. I spoke to them directly. Now, following to my point about ‘outsourcing’ and being ‘hands-on’. I was actually skiing in France when this call came through. So I was making these calls in the evenings and what-not to the plumber and the tenant whilst on holiday in France. It would have been difficult if I was self-managing and dealt with that. But equally, obviously having a bad agent is no good, either. So, I think that was part of the lesson that I wanted to emphasize.

But the tenant outlined what had been going on and it was, to be honest, quite clear that the agent wasn’t doing that job properly. I obviously went back and checked with the agent and they told me their version of events and it was all twisted around and minimized. But I know who I believe and not least of which because of what I just said about prescribed information and the deposit not being protected, I think because I saw that ‘fundamental’ is actually unforgivable for an agent not to do on my behalf. And obviously, it left me responsible for any consequences (possibly, them too, jointly). But you know that’s sort of irrelevant. Needless to say, this for me, was a shock. It was terrible. I hate to be in that position. I want to be a good landlord. I’m accredited by the National Landlords Association. I respond to repairs issue. If you were to ask my agents or my tenants, repairs are dealt with promptly. I want to look after my properties and look after my tenants. That’s very much my approach, so of course, I was literally mortified. But I have to say that the tenant, (she was a very nice lady) understood my position and my approach. And of course, I wanted to put things right quickly. So I sanctioned all the works that were needed to be done. I even covered the cost of the heating that she had to get in temporarily and that kind of thing. And we worked things between us and needless to say, I quite quickly confronted the agent and said, “Look this is not acceptable and I wanted to take my management agreement elsewhere.” And to be honest, the agent, he knew despite the fact that disputing the point or trying to refute it; I asked for evidence, but he couldn’t provide any. He cut me loose to coin a phrase.

So I actually went over to Tim Leffler who had left this agent and had gone to work for another agent in the town. I have to report that this was several months ago now and things were running much, much more smoothly.

So there’s the bad agent story that I kind of want to share with you.

So, here’s the good story and of course you’d be surprised if I don’t mention that it related to Tim.

Tim, first of all, worked for this first agency and as I mentioned, he offered me an awful lot of advice from the outset. In terms of things like, I had an LPG gas to power the cooking there and he advised on the correct safety checks required. So it’s a little bit unusual because normally you get gas central heating and a boiler and that sort of thing. And he was able to offer me advice, certainly in terms of safety certification and that sort of things. So it’s a semi-rural property and it has an oil-fired heating system, it was a boiler but it was oil-fired. So he was able to give me advice in that respect, in terms of having the system maintained regularly. And there were wood burners inside the property - it seems quite nice, doesn’t it? So, he talked to me about the chimneys and flues properly swept so that there was no risk of any carbon monoxide building up in the rooms because of the wood burners and any carbon monoxide detectors required. And this was before recent legislation, which has brought that into being. He was very much up to speed and I could give you a list of things that Tim is very much aware of and was able to advise me of and I found them invaluable.

So, that was when he was working for the old agency. Of course, when I switched this particular property to the new agency where he had gone to, he was equally helpful, I have to say. So that shows to me the value of a good agent and a bad agent but equally a good person working for an agency versus not working for that same agency and how standards can drop. So I guess the take-away learning from this little story is that “People work with people and I think that’s a really good thing. But it’s looking beyond just the personal relationships. It’s looking at the accreditation, the standards, the systems, the contingency plans and those were the things that the agent has in place. It all boils down to proper due diligence checks and making sure. In fact, Tim actually does a good job in the interview in outlining some of the steps that we can take to protect ourselves as landlords.

So there’s my bad story and my good story with regard to letting agents.

So moving on from the letting agent’s story, the other story that I’d like to share is about tenants. I don’t want to be shut down in flames here and I’m just going to give my perspective on the good side and the bad side.

Here’s a story of a bad side experience that I’ve had with some tenants. Essentially, this was a property that I have down in Cornwall. There was a family who were relocating from the Midlands down to the region. The husband and the father in the family, he was self-employed and he didn’t have the work to substantiate the income when he relocated. So, of course there were probably alarm bells ringing already and indeed there are now for me, going forward in this situation. I believe they needed a bit of a break and support. And so, ok I did take some protection in terms of some advance rent and that sort of thing. But I took them onboard when perhaps many people wouldn’t and perhaps now, I wouldn’t.

The first six months went fine and the second six months it came up for a tenancy renewal, the job situation hadn’t really taken off and I said, “Well, let’s renew on a similar basis.” Which basically involved the payment of some advance rent and this was agreed to but did not happen very easily. In fact, it was quite a challenge because I didn’t get the money on time. And when I did get some of the money, it wasn’t all of the money. There were communication issues and things happening behind the scenes there clearly. But the biggest single issue was the lack of communication, I just want to highlight that.

So, financial problems it sounded like and then some stress in the background. They were asking if I can go on a month-by-month contract and I was prepared to consider that but only if they work with me. And also if we had an agreement that we would communicate with each other in an open way if there are problems but that was proving to be a little bit difficult. Anyway, needless to say, the tenancy was due to expire in February but come December, they just gave notice and left even though the tenancy was still in place.  But they left, keeping the keys. They didn’t actually surrender the tenancy. I didn’t really mind if they wanted to leave. But I made it clear that I needed to find somebody else to take their position and to relieve them of their liability and responsibility. But of course for whatever reason, they were not prepared to listen to me and in fact, they weren’t prepared to listen to the agent that was involved.

So they left and, unbeknown to me, they notified all the utility companies and the council that they have vacated the property and transferred all the bills into my name and in fact, gave incorrect meter readings too. So, I got some time later, through re-directed mail, some nasty surprises with some bills which are not really my responsibility. So this was what happened and there were some damage and repairs that had to be dealt with through the deposit. So the deposit was pretty much used for cleaning and damage and repairs. There were some communication issues that I mentioned, but clearly they left but actually didn’t properly vacate, which made re-marketing the property difficult because they didn’t fully move out. They left the property and they left their stuff there. It was a bit of a mess, frankly. It was just a challenge and I think, the biggest single issue there was just one of communication and perhaps a good word from them, if it had to be dealt with a different way. So that wasn’t such a good experience from a tenant point of view.

But on the positive side, I’ve had number of good experiences. But the one that I want to share with you is that I have another property in the Slough area and the tenants who moved in there were actually great! To some extent, it was kind of too good and let me explain that. So for example, they wanted to resolve a number of the issues that they’ve identified on their own. So for example, the pump stopped working on the shower and they just tried to fix it. It was commendable. However, It’s not something I want my tenants to be doing because it’s my responsibility to make sure that it’s repaired and in good working order. I take my responsibilities seriously, but I just want to explain a little bit about the tenant’s attitude. So I think it was fixed temporarily and then it needed a replacement so obviously, I got involved at that point in time. But with all the inspections being done, the property is always immaculate, very, very clean. They’re really good neighbors in the area. It’s quite a small community they are in so they can actually make a big difference in that community. They’ve been as good as gold. They’re good tenants. They’re going to stay for a long time, they’re a family and that suits me absolutely fine. I am in no rush to move them on; I said they’re as good as gold. If anything, I probably need to make sure that we do pick up on their issues and deal with them and we are going to make sure that everything gets taken care of for them.

So I kind of just want to share these stories; the Two Good and Two Bad of dealing with agents and dealing with tenants.  Because this is the Part 2 of the lettings and management episode in this series, I’m actually going to do things slightly differently.

I’m going to queue up Tim’s interview as the Your Voice segment today. So in place of the reviews or the listener contributions, the Your Voice will be Tim’s voice today. So, we’re going to queue that up right now…

Your Voice

Richard Brown: So as I mentioned and we’re following on from last week, where we had Damien Fogg as our subject-matter-expert telling us all about self-managing in terms of property, it would only be fair to have a right reply as it were. I’m very happy to report that even on a Sunday evening, we have Tim Leffler with us, who’s giving up some of his weekend just to share some of his best practice.  I actually met him few years ago as a letting agent and his still my letting agent in the Boston area of the country. In fact, I followed him to his latest agency. So that actually tells you something. I would actually say this in anticipation of him speaking. He really is one of those guys who gives his time freely, is extremely professional and very, very much up-to-date on things. So that’s my experience of him.

But Tim, tell us a little bit of your experience as a letting agent and your experiences in property, generally. Give us a sense of scale and time if you don’t mind.

Tim Leffler: Yes, I’ve been in the letting world since 2007 and I’ve been with 3 different agencies. 2 Good and 1, not so good. We manage around about a thousand properties and we have 5 Full-time property managers and support staff behind that. And we see quite a lot of the good, the bad and hopefully not too much of the ugly the way we manage our properties but there’s not a lot that surprises us now.

Richard Brown: Well, that sounds great. It sounds like we got the right person in the chair. A qualified subject-matter-expert this week. So as you know, we are giving the response from the letting agent’s side. But you didn’t mention that you’ve had some experience on the other side of the fence as well. Is that right?

Tim Leffler: Yes, I’m also a landlord myself. I’ve been 20 years in the area and I’ve let a property when I was sent abroad. I’ve had a miserable time with 2 very poor agents in Norwich. And you know I’m a landlord and I’ve handled my own property myself. And hopefully, now that the elections are over, I’m looking to extend the game and looking at building my portfolio further.

Richard Brown: Excellent! So that’s the other side of the fence as I’ve mentioned. So into the quick-fire questions. First, what are your top 3 tips for a new or fairly new landlord investor, specifically in terms of letting and management?

Tim Leffler: My Top 3 tips to any new landlord would be:

1. Don’t buy until you can afford to buy it and make sure that you’ve got headroom to pay for eventualities. If you are buying below-market properties, then expect problems to come with that property because it’s not very often properly maintained. And as someone is selling it below-market value, there is a reason for it. Along with that is test-drive the property before letting it so you can find issues before the tenant does.
2. Research your target areas, presumably before you buy into it but certainly if you bought something then make sure you know about it. So if you buy a property that will rent well, research is so important for that. A lot of people buy on a whim or think it’s a cunning plan and then regret it later. But I would wait until you’re fully established before you take the more risky properties and you’ve got a sort of a bit of background to that; and
3. Finally, the third tip and I guess you would say I would say it, is choose to go with an agent and choose them wisely. It’s all very well to do it alone once you’re fully established and you’ve got a lot of experience but there’s also a lot of different experience that could go wrong and a good letting agent will show you the way and will probably train you on what is the good ways to do letting. And then maybe you can fly solo once you had a good letting agent look after, if that’s what you want to do

Richard Brown: I should get you and Damien in the same room. It should be interesting then…Him in the blue corner representing Self-Managing Landlords…

Tim Leffler: I would love to do that.

Richard Brown: Maybe we should do that later on. Well, I like what you said about “Don’t buy until you can afford to” because a lot of people ignore a lot of the costs which are not planned costs. You didn’t mention this, specifically but I guess you were talking about maintenance and those voids that often people don’t factor in. Is that right?

Tim Leffler: Absolutely! It’s always a serious worry to me when I get a landlord who has obviously stretched themselves to get their first property. And then they bought it and then suddenly, they get a new boiler to fix or a roof to mend or an unexpected void period.

I’ve got a landlord who can’t afford to repair a shower and so the tenants did not have a washing facility. And then she said, “I can t afford it”. Well, you’ve got to. And so we’ve got to come up with a cunning plan to sort it. So it is a deep worry when people don’t wait. Wait a few extra months until you can afford it and when you’ve got some finance available because it is not cheap setting up as any experienced landlord will tell you. There are pitfalls and they need to be aware of them.

Richard Brown: So Tim what are the top three steps that a landlord can take when choosing a good letting agent?

Tim Leffler: I would say, don’t judge them on their price, judge them on how they operate. Make sure that you interview all your letting agents and make sure that you check that they have proper qualifications because without the proper qualifications, there could be a huge gap in their knowledge. Make sure that they are with ARLA or RICS and that they have client-money protection. And also choose an agent that is willing to work with you and not just take your money; and offer you advice through their experience and you can learn from them. And after that, if you don’t want to go with an agent anymore, at least you’ve had some good training from someone who is an expert. But they probably would want to speak to you because they want their business back.

Richard Brown: Yes, absolutely! I agree with you and I don’t question the value that an agent can bring. The next question is, what is the biggest potential pitfall or the biggest warning to a relatively inexperienced landlord, when using an agent, specifically.

Tim Leffler: The biggest pitfall would be engaging an agent who has none of the qualifications which was discussed before. If you go for the cheapest, there certainly are holes and they can lead you astray in so many ways. If you choose an agent who offers unrealistically cheap fees, they must be doing something where they’re cutting a corner somewhere. And also don’t choose an agent who has an anti-tenant attitude, who always treats and speaks down on tenants because they’re probably going to have a lot of problems with tenants. And if it’s your property and you’ve got problems with tenants, so you don’t want that. You actually want someone to work and sort things with your tenants.

Richard Brown: Great advice!  A little bit off the wall, perhaps, but what is the funniest or strangest experience you have had with a landlord or a tenant?

Tim Leffler: I know you had a conversation with Damien and I know he mentioned a poltergeist. But for me, I guess the funniest one would be a tenant blaming a damaged property on a poltergeist who they said lives in a property with them as well. I guess anyone would avoid anything if they can and blaming on something that you can’t prove or disprove. It seems a possible logical thing. There’s always a strange reason for why there are damages done to the property at the end of the tenancy like dogs eat things, mice chew things, next door’s cat did something… And it’s never their fault.

Richard Brown: So that poltergeist is getting around quite a bit… (laughs)

Tim Leffler: Yes, he is obviously in different properties…

Richard Brown: He must be… He must be… Unless it’s the same property, who knows… So, some would say that you can save money by self-managing. What would you say as the main value drive a letting agent can give to a landlord?

Tim Leffler: You definitely can save money by not paying an agent’s fees but I think it’s what you would see as where your money and time is. It releases valuable time for you to do other things. A good agent would provide you with essential advice on legalities and shifting sense of legislation. It also gives you the impersonal touch as you don’t get personally involved with the tenants, and that for a lot of people can actually be a good thing because people don’t like confrontations and they can be a requirement to be firm with tenants at times. You pass in onto a third party and also very much top of the shop would be that a good agent will manage problems as they arise. And if you manage problems as they happen, they don’t because disasters and hopefully you can get early resolutions.

Richard Brown: Yes, I can say from personal experience during our time, Tim that you’ve always managed to keep yourself on top of problems and giving me good advice. So, I will support that side of the argument for sure. So let’s get to the other side though. Making your job harder as landlords, we sometimes do things which sometimes don’t really help you. What are the sort of things do we do that make your life more difficult?

Tim Leffler: The worst thing that a landlord can do is speak directly to a tenant and come to an agreement that the agent doesn’t know about. A classic case was I went to do a check-out and the TV area was removed off the top of the house and it was back to the shed at the back and I was like “Why? Where was the TV area? And they said “Well the landlord let me because birds were sitting over it and the area was over my car. And the landlord said I could move it. But nobody told us and it was an agreement with the landlord and many other worse things.

Second would be, not having the financial facilities to pay for something as we discussed earlier. You’ve got to be prepared to fork out when maintenance is needed. To look after your tenants, you’ve got to be able to maintain the property and take it on the chin. Because trying to delay repairs and maintenance gives you unhappy tenants and unhappy agents. And then it often leads to tenants leaving. I’ve got a case of that exactly now where the landlord has been tardy in repairing and the tenant is now giving notice and he is probably going to end up with a void period because we won’t let it until he sorted the problems out.

Richard Brown: Well you know, you and I have spoken quite a few times before this call and it must be a landlord’s responsibility and just trying to make the whole industry a little bit more professional. I think certainly taking repairs and maintenance issues seriously and treating it like a business and having money prepared for those eventualities, I definitely agree with that.

Tim Leffler: Absolutely, I mean letting is very much a business wherein the landlord should provide customer service. If you go to court, you will be treated as a business and not providing proper business facilities and so one of the things they say to new landlords is, “You are starting a business and setting up is a business…

Richard Brown: Agree. So last question from me (and it’s really just to say thank you in some ways) is, How can people find out a little bit more about you if they ever want to get in touch with you?

Tim Leffler: I know that a lot of people find me on ThePropertyHub.net online. It’s a free forum to join and you have some fantastic guys in there. You have yourself, Rob Dix and co. And as always, I try to put the agents view for people. We will try to make a response to people’s issues. Hopefully, people found some really useful tips there. I go by the nom de plume of “Tim Wragby” and I also use that for my Twitter feed @timwragby and again I try to pass on all the useful things that I know on Twitter. Also I work in the Boston area, it’s not exactly a high density area.  I work for a really good local agency, Hill & Clark who pay me my daily bread so I can enjoy what I’m doing, which is property. I just love property and dealing with them like this. So I try to spend some time online trying to help. It’s an enjoyment rather than a chore.

Richard Brown: Thanks Tim, I think you are going to have a surge in Twitter followers now, having given very good advice. I’ve always seen you do that and you give your advice and time freely and in-depth. Thanks for joining us in The Property Voice Podcast. I really appreciate that and it’s been great to talk to you and hearing your professional insights

Tim Leffler: You’re very welcome! Great to speak to you Richard.

Richard Brown: Thanks a lot, Tim.

 

Richard: So, we’ve also rattled through my Two Good, Two Bad and we’ve had the Your Voice contribution this week from Tim Leffler so hopefully, you’ve enjoyed that introduction, that’s slightly different take on things this week. Probably, normal service is resumed next week. In terms of the Shout-Out this week, it’s going to be nice and simple, more like a technical resource. And then if you ever found that you’re sending emails out and you wonder if somebody actually got them. There are sort of send and receipts and all the delivery notifications and all those sort of things you can get through Outlook and that type of thing, but they’re easy to bypass in all honesty.  I have heard of tools we’ve used with Google and if you’re like me or large majority of people that use something like Outlook, there is an app called Sidekick. And that is an email tracking tool and that can be used with webmail and indeed there is an Outlook plug-in.

The shout-out this week is for an application called Sidekick. And it just gives you a notification when somebody opened your email or when somebody forwarded on to someone else. It’s nice and discreet and it’s in the background. There is no action required on the recipient’s side.

So Sidekick is this week’s shout-out.

A little bit of a different take in this episode this week, I hope you find that useful and enjoyable. And by all means do get involved in the show. We would love to have your contributions in Your Voice. We’re loving the reviews. Sorry, we didn’t share any this particular week but they are accumulating. I can see that and I really appreciate it. So by all means, head over to the show notes and get engaged with the show but for another week, its Ciao, Caio from me…

Casa: Ciao, Caio…