Estate agency’s unusual portfolio sales arm breaks new ground within industry
This £4.7m block is typical of the properties Home helps letting agents sell on behalf of landlords without losing their management contract.
A growing niche sector of the property industry has been highlighted by an unusual listing recently uploaded to both Rightmove and Zoopla.
The property is a 41-apartment block, part of a portfolio belonging to a landlord looking to scale down his portfolio, located in the Woodthorpe area of Sheffield.
It’s been listed as a ‘house’ with 93 bedrooms and 60 bathrooms by Home Estate Agents based in Warrington which specialises in a relatively new kind of service within the industry – helping lettings-only agencies sell homes for landlords.
“I’d like to think we first came up with the idea for the concept, which we call ‘Sales Division’,” Jack Cartlidge, Home’s Head of Sales (pictured) tell The Negotiator.
“We do the marketing of the property, the letting agents does the viewings and we then complete the sale progression at the end.
“It was the brainchild of our director Mike Taylor back in 2013 and it solves a problem for letting-only agents whose landlord clients ask them to sell up a property or part of their portfolio; namely that all too often the selling agent they ask to help will then pick up the lettings business from the new landlord.
“With our model, lettings agents can help landlords sell their properties but keep the homes on their books and meet new landlords too.”
Property portfolio
Cartlidge says its only been this year that their ‘sales division’ operation has begun selling off large property portfolio units – including properties like the Sheffield one – after he was recruited to grow the business.
“I realised that our ‘sales division’ service could be something much bigger and over the past nine months we’ve been busy getting to know all the wealth management funds, because they are the kind of investors which will consider buying a multi-property, multi-million pound apartment block,” he says.
“In the case of this block, the original sale to a fund fell through so we thought ‘why not take a punt and put it on the property portals to see what happens’ – and it’s already had quite a lot of enquiries.”