We are very pleased to let our clients know that we are now members of The Property Ombudsman Service.
TPOS provides a free, impartial and independent service, resolving disputes between Consumers and Property Agents like ourselves. You can read about what they do on their website.
Why Do We Need It?
In truth, we don’t! However we are building a business which we believe can be different to others in our sector. Part of that is to give our clients as much security through the purchase process as possible. Being a member of TPOS is part of that.
Whilst we always deal with problems as they arise, and often before the client finds out about them, we appreciate that new clients might need evidence to support that claim. We believe that being a member of TPOS demonstrates that we are willing to be independently scrutinised if the unlikely happened and an impasse was reached.
Additional Security
There are some other elements to our working practises which give investors security over and above some of our competitors:
- 5% of our refurbishment costs are retained by you until hand over of the completed works. Until we get that money we are out of pocket as our margin on refurbs is less than that!
- When you proceed with buying a property that we have sourced you purchase it directly via your solicitor (or one we can recommend). You do not give us your money to buy the property on your behalf. Nor are you a shareholder in a property. In the shareholder model you tend to not have control. You are 100% in control of the purchase, management and disposal of the property.
- You don’t pay us any fees until the completion of the purchase of the property. We charge a sourcing fee, and £1200 of that is held in our client account until completion. Like a solicitors client account, the money in that account isn’t ours until completion or if you pull out of the deal contrary to the terms in the reservation form. A copy of our reservation form is available on request.
- We deliver a refurbishment to a pre-agreed fixed price. This price is agreed before completion of your purchase.
- If required, we can arrange for a Homebuyers survey of the property during the conveyancing process. This helps us and you identify if there is anything we should be aware of that we haven’t already identified.
- We provide gas and electrical safety certificates, 10 year damp-proof course guarantees and when required we can obtain FENSA certificates for windows via a third party.
We believe being a member of TPOS adds another layer of security for our clients, and helps to make us the best choice partner to work with.
Interested? Please find out more about our deals, or get in touch.