After moving around the rental market three times in the past two years and now contemplating stepping onto the property ladder I’ve wondered on more than a few occasions whether PR currently exists in residential property…
Firstly my (quite scary) experiences trying to rent a place in London brought me unhelpful agent after agent. Shop windows were never updated, letting agents were clueless and whats more they couldn’t even stick to a clear budget. I recall one particularly well-known mini-driving agent who sat me down and went through the nominal details:
Agent: So what area are you looking to rent in?
Me: N1 – not N5 and not higher than the fields
Agent: Do you know the area well?
Me: Yes, I’ve lived here for 18 months
Agent: I’ve only just moved here so you’ll have to show me on the map
Not exaggerating at all and to be quite frank it got worse! I won’t dwell as I finally found a lovely place to settle but it seems now I’m back to square one wondering if the sales agents might be even worse what with the higher commission levels.
It’s making it extremely difficult to get excited about as I’m dreading dealing with those ignorant, time-wasting lot again. (I do imagine it’s ten-times worse in London so apologies to all those hard-working, kind agents).
Taking the situation as I would if I were a consultant and they, my client – I think it would be tough stuff to run a successful PR campaign. Thinking about the strategic process I normally take with clients, I’m racking my brains and struggling to find anything that would stick with the public. Or is this truly only a hypothetical scenario…
The way I see method is: due to high demand and competition in the rental market, perspective tenants concentrate purely on the finding the right property and not the person who basically just opens the door for them and sometimes even treats them to a little alarm sound during the viewing!
We as consumers want to know about organic with food, sustainability with clothing and recommendation with travel. How did this market sidestep criteria and criticism? I mean how much carbon footprint does it take to run everyone around in miniature BMWs?
Can an industry in such turbulent times – affected so much by the economy – really be that straightforward that Joe Public just can’t afford to care about customer service?
I honestly didn’t think anything was as simple ‘supply and demand’ anymore…
