Why a Fixed Fee doesn't mean we don't care

This little video explains why we still work hard for you even though we don't charge a percentage for our management fee.

Flat fees - a disincentive for what?

This week two customers who I spoke to at the start of January have come back to me to say they don't want to instruct anyone else so can I come and take some pictures of their properties and get them advertised.

Great news as I was beginning to think they had forgotten about me! When I worked for a corporate company we had to chase up new landlord leads on a daily basis if a couple of days had gone by and we hadn't heard from them. I hated doing that and tried to avoid it if I could. Now, as you can imagine I don't do it at all. If they want bluedoor they will come to bluedoor, it is as simple as that.

It seems that the other agents who these two landlords invited into their homes proceeded to hound them on a daily basis offering them all kinds of inducements to instruct them which as you can imagine is pretty annoying - and off-putting. Our deal is our deal and everything I say when meeting a landlord for the first time is the same as what I say a week later. No deals, no discounts and no guilt trips!

Anyhow obviously our honesty, transparency, integrity and consistency have won out yet again and several folks are now sitting in their offices disappointed. Take note of the above my friends.

This latest landlord asked me a strange thing when he called me to instruct me though. He was wondering what incentive we have for increasing the rent on his property if we stand to gain nothing from any increase as we don't charge a percentage. Good question!

I hope that over time he will see that the honesty that I show upfront is also the honesty which drives our business. Our first adverts had the text 'Helping Landlords get more of their rent' You might have seen on in the Post Office in Abingdon or in the Property Weekly. That is what we still do. We do the best for our landlords and charge a flat fee for doing it. Simple and unusual but still true.

Onward and Upward

Tonight I've been on Rightmove adding some new instructions and I thought I'd have a look at those folks who I consider to be our competitors and see what they are offering to let this month. This is not a list of all the agents locally just some who I spy on to see what they are up to!

The results just in, hot off the screen are as follows:

Hodsons Abingdon 7 properties Go Robin and Joe!

Hodsons Didcot 14 properties Go Trudles! (she is good you know!)

Andrews Abingdon 8 properties Go Andrew!

Buckell and Ballard Abingdon 12 properties Go James!

Allen and Harris 13 properties Off to a good start....!

Lansbrough Lettings 11 properties Go Hadrian!

Chancellors 11 properties Go team!

Abingdon Lettings Centre 17 properties Go Dougie!

BlueDoor has 20 properties and none are advertised with any other agents unlike some of those above. I could pretend that I don't know what we are doing that other people aren't but I can't be that modest! We are the only people who will answer the phone on a Sunday and take on a property there and then if that is what the landlord wants. We are the only flat fee agents in the county and no amount of maths can disguise the fact that even 10% of your rent is often a lot more than our fee of £65 per month for full management. Oh and we'll give you £50 if you recommend a landlord to us and we let their property for them.

We have not been trading for quite three years yet and we already have a big share of the local and Oxfordshire market because we are unusual. Big corporate companies with lots of office space, staff, overheads and cars are becoming difficult to justify in this market. Slim businesses, smart use of time and frankly crappy looking cars are obviously the way to go!

How many offices have you walked past this week and seen people at their desks surfing the internet or making cups of tea? If you are a landlord you are paying for that to happen and if I were you I'd be wondering if my money was being well spent.

We had the pleasure of taking over the management of a property in Didcot this week and when I popped in to collect the keys from the old agents I was faced with a ghost of my corporate past that I thought was well and truly buried. I only asked how it was going just as you would if you bumped ito a friend in the street and I got a most bizarre response: 'I completed so many lets last month my conversion rate is 1 in 5 which must mean that my applicant matching is really good'. Gosh. Is that a good thing?

We don't use that kind of speak here. We advertise with lots of pictures, do viewings and let properties. We don't have a white board with targets, yields, conversion rates and completions which needs to be monitored and updated daily or someone gets it in the neck. I used to work in a place with one of those though and my colleagues were always irked that my numbers were regularly bigger than theirs in every column.

Smug, me? No, just quite good at this job!

Oh well that's my ramblings for today. Let me find a picture or two for you now.

First, these are our favourite locksmiths who we like because they share our view of how to get business done.

And secondly, probably the highest stairwell I've seen for some time. I don't envy the decorators who painted this! There are stairs there I promise, I just couldn't get the window and the stairs in at once without getting dizzy.

Bicester Agents get Blue Door'd but we come in peace

Oh yes. What agents in Abingdon and Oxford have long known and feared will now be visited on Bicester agents.

They will do market appraisals and hear potential landlords say "We've had Blue Door round, can you tell me exactly what you do differently for 12%+VAT of my monthly rent? They will probably mutter something like "We pay a man to put up an unsightly board which advertises our company at your expense" or "We will put one tiny picture of your property among 20 others on a page of a newspaper"

They will struggle to come up with anything else really because that is all they do that we don't do. the list of what we do that they don't do is a bit longer.

They need to take heed. They will need to up their web advertising from one paltry photo to at least 10 or so. They will also need to answer emails late at night, take phone calls on a Sunday, do viewings and MAs at times to suit the customer not the office tea and biscuit schedule and they will need to charge a more realistic fee for their work.

Flat fees are the way forward. No renewal fees are also more honest. We're unusual: they are all the same.

They don't yet know how many properties we have in Bicester because they won't see any boards, we don't always get time to put properties on our website either as they are snapped up too fast. We remain a mystery to the competition and that's how we like it. We expect more 'phishy' emails enquiring about our fees from dodgy Hotmail addresses as our name spreads on the lips of those who love us for what we are.

Here's a little bit of maths for you to try out.

What is 12% of £750?

Use the % button on your calculator if you like or do this: Multiply 725 by 0.12 (12 hundredths, which is what 12% is) then press equals. You get 90.00.
Make it into money £90.00 then add VAT if you are sitting down.

YIKES YIKES YIKES!

Now compare Blue Door's fees

Rent PCM	Blue Door Management Fee	Percentage of Rent
£695.00	£65.00	9%
£750.00	£65.00	8.7%
£850.00	£65.00	7.6%
£950.00	£65.00	6.8%
£1200.00	£65.00	5.4%

Even when you add VAT our fees are a reasonable £76.38

If you do the maths and find that you are paying too much for the management of your rental property give us a ring. If you don't have a rental property and this means nothing to you - tell someone else! If we get their business, you get £50. Simple.