spicerhaart
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Latest property news
SpicerHaart strikes ‘guaranteed buyer’ deal with innovative Essex development
SpicerHaart says its part exchange arm is to help up to 251 buyers help sell their homes while they wait for 'self designed' homes to be built.
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Latest property news
Spicerhart signs up 100 branches with deposits alternative service Flatfair
Agency group Spicerhaart has signed up with smartphone-based deposits alternative Flatfair and will now offer the service via the company’s 100 lettings branches to its 15,000 landlords. Instead of taking a deposit, tenants pay a ‘membership fee’ equivalent to one week’s rent while landlords are covered for up to 12 weeks’ worth of rent. Tenants are still liable for any damages to the property and unpaid rent, sums that Flatfair recovers itself on behalf of the landlord. Benefits claimed by Flatfair,which is not an insurance-based product unlike many of its competitors, include faster damage payouts, access to a pool of more reliable tenants via its tenant scoring system, faster lettings, lower agent costs and fewer lengthy voids. “Many landlords are concerned that their property is not sufficiently protected by a tenancy deposit, particularly true in the light of the upcoming deposit-cap, and that lengthy void periods and penalties eat away at their rental yield,” says Spicerhaart’s Lettings Development Director Paul Sloan (left). “We were highly impressed with Flatfair’s innovative technology and how easy the platform was to use. We’re confident it’ll mean not only lower up-front costs for tenants but also help make our landlords’ properties more appealing. Flatfair, which…
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Latest property news
Snow debate about the timing… SpicerHaart send staff on Alpine driving course just before storm Emma
Thursday and Friday last week were quiet days for many agents as viewings, appraisals and tenant check-ins proved difficult to get to as the beast from the east roared in. But one set of 24 SpicerHaart agents will have had fewer excuses than most for cancelling appointments, as they had recently completed a course in the Austrian alps designed to sharped up their snow and ice driving skills. The top-performing agents from several of the company’s agencies including haart, Chewton Rose, Felicity J Lord, Darlows and Haybrook were in Austria three weeks ago on a glacier near the ski resort of Sölden. It’s some 3,000 metres above sea level and the highest driver training camp of its kind in the world. The course, which was provided by BMW, included instruction on how to avoid skidding into walls of ice, breaking and steering on snow, as well as avoiding steep drops down the mountainside.4 The trip was part of SpicerHaart’s ongoing programme of taking its brightest stars on foreign jaunts. “It was a brilliant trip, absolutely fantastic [and] we all now know how to drive properly in the snow,” said Mel Mills (pictured, above), Branch Manager of haart in Bury St…
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Latest property news
Unauthorised To Let board lands Essex agent with £3,000 fine
An estate agency in Colchester has been fined more than £3,000 by the local authority after contesting an earlier prosecution that it had placed an authorised To Let board on a block of flats. Saxons, which has an office on the town’s historic high street, originally had charges brought against it in April this year, along with three other agents, for displaying unauthorised boards around the town. The other agents were William H Brown, Spicerhaart and David Martin who admitted the charges and were each fined £500 plus costs. But Saxons’ Senior Property Manager Jeff Hamblion denied that their board on a block of flats in the Hythe Hill area to the east of the town centre had been placed incorrectly, claiming that “some drunk, or someone else” had moved it from a legitimate location. The case against them has only now been heard. To Let board Saxons lost and must now pay a £1,000 fine and costs totalling £2,047. It has also been revealed that the company, along with the other agents, had been warned by Council planning enforcement officers on “a number of occasions about their advertisement boards yet still continued to erect boards without the necessary consent”,…
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Latest property news
Former Felicity J Lord branch manager wins unfair dismissal case
A London estate agent has won an unfair dismissal case against agency Felicity J Lord at a tribunal hearing this week during which comments by parent company Spicerhaart’s CEO were heard as were details of a complaint by Rightmove. Senior branch manager Abul Samad, 39, worked at the agency’s Bow offices in London but resigned in February last year because he believed the company had mismanaged an earlier disciplinary procedure against him over disputed commission payments. During the disciplinary process Samad claimed that Felicity J Lord bosses had instructed him to advertise houses online that were not for sale to help gain bonuses or commissions. He also claimed that Rightmove had complained to the company about the practice. When launching his claim in March, Samad also said the company was keen to make its results look as good as possible ahead of a possible stock market flotation, the Evening Standard has reported. Asad, who has since set up his own estate agency in London, also accused his former employer of racial and religious discrimination as well as victimisation over his whistleblowing, all claims that Felcity J Lord denied. Held at the East London Tribunal Hearing Centre, Samad’s tribunal ruled that he…
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Latest property news
Brexit: property market in Remain areas performing worst
The post-Brexit property market is performing worst in areas that voted Remain during the EU Referendum, it has been claimed by agent group Spicerhaart. In what seems a strange twist to the EU Referendum debate, the multi-brand property group says sales in cities where the Remain vote was strongest have experienced a 50% increase in the number of abandoned sales compared to strongly Leave areas, where the number of abandoned sales decreased by two percent. Spicerhaart says it gathered the Brexit property research data from 20 of its branches, but the company is not specific about which cities they are in. But this is likely to include London, Cambridge, Oxford, Brighton, St Albans and Bristol where more than 60% of each city’s voters elected to remain in the EU. The company has branches in several of these Remain hotspots including its 70-plus Haart and Felicity J Lord branches in London, and its handful of Haart branches in Cambridge and Bristol. “With the announcement of a cut in interest rates, which will see the country’s cheapest ever mortgage rates fall ever further, it will not be long before we see a return in confidence and business as usual,” says Paul Smith,…
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Features
Company names and intellectual property rights
When is a descriptive word not just a descriptive word? When it’s used to brand two separate property agencies and, according to a judge, to confuse the public. Trademark lawyer Imogen Wiseman reports .
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