Statue of Thomas More. Cheyne Walk, Chelsea.

Most viewed posts:
1. 8 Tips For Negotiating a Lower Rent
2. Famous London Tenants: Reese Witherspoon & Jake Gyllenhaal
3. Foxtons Short Term Rentals

Most viewed pages:
1. London Letting Agents
2. Most Expensive Rental Apartments In London, UK
3. Interior Market

Most popular keywords:
1. Jake Gyllenhaal
2. Royals of Rent
3. Thelondonagent

Most popular sources:
1. Google
2. Direct
3. Images.google.co.uk

Source: Google Analytics

The very first edition of the FindaProperty.com Rental Index is now available!

London Rental Market

Asking property rental prices in London have begun to fall, as a glut of new property swamps the market. Areas that have been particularly dependent on tenants working in the financial services sector such as the City of London, Tower Hamlets (incorporating Canary Wharf) and Kensington & Chelsea, have seen the biggest annual falls in asking rents. Some areas such as City of London have seen their average rental asking price come down by up to 11.7% (=£221). In contrast, London’s more affordable boroughs have seen their rental asking prices rise by up to 6.7% (=£74). London average monthly rental price now stands at £1,669.

London boroughs overview, click to enlarge the screenshot of the report.

Andrew Smith, Head of Research, comments:

“The London rental market has been heavily touched by the recent turmoil in the city. Areas that used to historically be populated by city workers either renting by themselves or occupying a corporate let have felt the pinch the most. In contrast, more affordable locations usually situated in London’s outer boroughs have benefited from rental growth. We attribute this to tenants willing to expand their area of property search to achieve more affordable rents and these areas to be less reliant on city workers.”

Best & Worst performers, click on it to enlarge screenshot of the report.

Download the full report HERE.

Click here to see the list of twitterers who have something to say to London renters.

We will be updating the list, so please do not hesitate to tweet us if you want to be seen on it!

Estate agent DomusNova‘s website is simply addictive.

We’ve just spent an hour on it looking at the pictures of the rentals – seeing the photos full screen is just so enjoyable.

DomusNova operates in West London – covering postcodes W2, W8, W9, W10, W11, W12, NW6, NW10.

You will love their full screen interactive local map (click LOCAL on the menu), and the navigation system which is built up so that you won’t have to do much clicking.

The website was launched in September last year.

Jump to www.domusnova.com

Yahoo! Answers seems to have gathered an impressive amount of users! Lots of questions answered. People there are friendly and helpful, none of that “Go search on Google, duh!”

Ask your question on:

- Renting & Real Estate UK
- Home & Garden UK

Property website Enormo has just notified us (through Twitter!) of some significant changes.

They say they have improved the way the site looks and feels, and – all the UK properties can now be accessed from a separate domain name Enormo.co.uk as well.

Our thoughts about the new site, looking from London renter’s point of view:

+ it’s very simple to use
+ it’s clean, there are no distractions (no banner ads yet;))
+ surprisingly fast
+ we like  the convenient links to the original ad and agent’s website
+ we can feed London rental listings to our Google Reader through RSS (Subscribe)

- Too many steps/clicks to get to the listings through search. It’s personal, I guess but we prefer to do the filtering after, here you have to do that first. NB! click on the shorcut Popular Searches: London to get to the London listings right away.
- Not all London rental properties are here. YET. 2250 rentals in London at the moment (10 000 + in Globrix, 21 000 in FindaProperty.com)

All in all, the site looks very promising. If you like good order, and browsing without any distractions – use it already.

Jump to London lettings at Enormo
Follow Enormo_UK on Twitter

Globrix – “Where every new week brings new features”

Clicking on the new Details & Trends tool will open a page full of valuable information and shortcuts.

We can now:

- twitter the property with one click;
- see lists of nearby schools, transport and local businesses, powered by Qype;
- see the unique Globrix URL on the address bar;
- see how much the property we are renting is worth;
- see for how long the property has been up on the website.

Check it out yourself at Globrix London rentals.

Floor-plans in rental property listings will not be such a rare sight soon!

No description or photo could ever give renters the information a plan does, so we were glad to hear Justin from MyPropertyGuide tell us that many energy inspectors are now offering to do floor-plans at a small additional fee while they’re at the property preparing the EPC.

Independent energy assessor Neil Hammond confirms:

The EPC data requires measurement of the property floor area as standard. As a natural extension to this service, floor plans can be created at the same time as an EPC by extending the measurements to include room details.

Some of the london letting agents we know are displaying floor-plans in their listings already:
Egerton Roche
Foxtons
Marsh & Parsons
Knight Frank
Savills

We did a little search on the web to see a hint of how much it would cost to order a floor-plan along with that EPC:

EPC Plan

London Energy Assessors

Out of date listings on the Internet? No kidding?

What can we renters do about it?

The Times suggests writing a complaint to the site admin. Hmm, good idea but most of us probably won’t have time to do that.

Another option is to use a website where only Association of Residential Letting Agents ARLA member agents list. It’s called PropertyLive.co.uk. Problem is there are not a lot of rentals there – still only has 122 for London. The certified agents are more disciplined but there are no guarantees.

It is quite impossible to tell which ad is still up because it was really – just rented out – or which one is there just to get the tenants to call in.

Wonder if “Report listing”-type of button would help? We’d have time to press that! Some bigger sites might have or consider the same system as the newspaper comment sections have. Say, if 3 people have alerted the site owner, an automatic E-mail would be sent to the site owner and the agent.

Any other ideas?

Google Translate is an excellent tool for foreigners looking to rent a flat or a house in London. The translations are not by far perfect yet, and can even be quite funny but nevertheless – seems like it could  become very helpful for the renting business in the future.  There is a slight risk of total misunderstanding today, as many words are not translated correctly, so I can’t really advise the agents to put the links to the translated versions on their website.

To see Chard estate agent’s website in Spanish, click here.

We’ve translated “Apartment for rent in London” to all the languages that Google translates:

Albanian – apartament për ta marrë me qira në Londër
Arabic – شقة للإيجار في لندن
Bulgarian – Апартамент под наем в Лондон
Catalan – pis de lloguer a Londres
Chinese (simplified) – 出租公寓在伦敦
Chinese (traditional) – 出租公寓在倫敦
Croatian – Apartman za iznajmljivanje u Londonu
Czech – byt k pronájmu v Londýně
Danish – Lejlighed til leje i London
Dutch – appartement te huur in Londen
Estonian – korteri üür Londonis
Filipino – apartment para rentahan sa London
Finnish – huoneisto vuokrattavana Lontoossa
French – appartement à louer à Londres
Galician – apartamento para alugar en Londres
German – Wohnung zur Miete in London
Greek – διαμέρισμα προς ενοικίαση στο Λονδίνο
Hebrew – דירה להשכרה בלונדון
Hindi – लंदन में किराए के मकान
Hungarian – lakás kiadó Londonban
Indonesian – apartemen yang bisa disewa di London
Italian – appartamento in affitto a Londra
Japanese – ロンドンの賃貸アパート
Korean – 런던에 임대 아파트
Latvian – dzīvokļu īre Londonā
Lithuanian – Butas nuomai Londone
Maltese – appartament għall-kera London
Norwegian – Leilighet til leie i London
Polish – mieszkania do wynajęcia w Londynie
Portuguese – apartamento para alugar em Londres
Romanian – apartament de închiriat de la Londra
Russian – Квартира в аренду в Лондон
Serbian – Апартман за изнајмљивање у Лондону
Slovak – byt na prenájom v Londýne
Slovenian – apartma za najem v Londonu
Spanish – piso en alquiler en Londres
Swedish – lägenhet uthyres i London
Thai – อพาร์ทเมนต์สำหรับเช่าในลอนดอน
Turkish – Londra’da kiralık ev
Ukrainian – Квартира в оренду в Лондон
Vietnamese – căn hộ cho thuê ở London

More interesting details from our friends at FindaProperty.com!

Here is the list of top 20 London postcode areas searched by renters on FindaProperty.com in January 2009.

The most popular postcode W2 in the very heart of London covers areas such as Bayswater, Hyde Park, Marble Arch, Notting Hill, Paddington, Westbourne Green, Little Venice (part). Click here to see London W2 property to rent & area guide by FindaProperty.com.

More details from the portal’s kitchen: Winging It

Good question from our fellow twitterer Bill, who asks: “What does it say about a property if it makes it into the most viewed list?”

Mike O’Flynn, content editor of FindaProperty.com, explains:

With lettings, the top properties are no doubt driven by three key factors: price, location and recency.

However, there are some tips we provide to agents to help them maximize their ads – in a nutshell, the more detail in your ad the better. And the more up-to-date your listings the better.

At list level:
- Short description outlining the key features of the property
- A high quality photograph
- Where exactly the property is located. Ensure you use full postcodes so that distance from transport links appear

At full details level:
- More pictures – the more the better
- Additional info: Floor plans, Energy Performance Charts, Brochures
- Full postcode to ensure exact placement on map
- Detailed description: people want details – room dimensions, key features, some local information, etc.

FindaProperty.com is one of the most popular property portals that Londoners use. Read Winging It to get more inside information from the website’s team.

Inspired by the 20 marketing tips from Belvoir Lettings at PropertyOwl’s place.

Here is what we would add to that list:

The 1st photo has to stand out!

There are tons of ads renters have to go through when searching for the right property. If my experienced head is usually literally spinning after an hour of intensive browsing – just imagine the pain new Londoners have to go through. A good first photo would make the search so much more enjoyable but it’s not the only reason why more attention should be paid on that first photo.

You might think that the address is enough to make the renter open your ad but is it true when it comes to those who know nothing about London? Or those who speak very little English? This group is very sensitive to that first photo on the long list of properties.

Take time to think about how to make the first photo so good, that it works like banner that says – LOOK AT ME! It will pay off, mark my words.

Also, changing the first photo after it has been hanging up for too long, could a good idea as well, as it might attract a click from someone who has dismissed the ad before.

The last request would be – please pay attention to details. If there is absolutely nothing else to show, just typical rooms and furniture, then maybe you can find a detail that would intrigue us to open the ad.

A few thoughts on what impact a not so good first photo would have:

POOR QUALITY
I have noticed that at some point, when browsing the listings, I would start ignoring properties that have the first photo in very bad quality (blurry, verticals off, odd colours). What this says to me is that no-one really cares about the property. Not now, and probably not after I move in…

NO PHOTO
Ads with no photo belong to the 20th century. Those ads spell “trouble”. Either the apartment is not ready, the agent has not seen it, it’s in a really bad condition, etc.

COMPANY LOGO AS PHOTO
Equals to no photo. Pass!

DIDN’T I JUST LOOK AT THIS?
Photo of the red brick building exterior, empty room, just some room with vanilla-coloured walls – the property can go unnoticed if I don’t know the address.

COPY-PASTE
There is this great apartment for rent at Park Street in Mayfair, which some 3 agents are advertising. All 3 first photos in the list have been taken from the same angle. Nice pictures but one of them could do better! Right now it is just to obvious that there are many agents advertising the same property, and noone seems to bother with marketing although it is quite an expensive apartment.

Guess why I would open all these 3 ads below, as listed in Globrix.

1. Great view. I am intrigued to see more.
2. Looks very interesting, even if it is not to my taste. I want to have a closer look at the details. If there was a photo of the exterior, I would have opened it maybe at a 50/50 chance.
3. Interesting angle of the entrance. Obviously they know how to point out the good points, and I wonder how they present the interior.

In general I would have to say that the situation is not too bad with the first photos, and I’m not complaining too much. It’s just that there’s so much unused potential:)

Say you’re renting a room in a flat, where at some point one of the tenants is moving out. The landlord might let you choose your new flatmate, provided you find him/her yourself. Where should you advertise the room?

This question was actually asked in LandlordZone forum but we’ll ask the same question for London specifically:

Which website is best to advertise a room to let in London?

What would you recommend and why?

Here is the list of websites that we know of:
EasyRoommate.com Lots of latmates, flatshares
FlatmateClick.co.uk Good selection of flatmates & flatshares
Gumtree Clasifieds site. Post room wanted or room available
Live Simply Listings from private landlords only
MoveFlat.co.uk Flatshares
Spareroom.co.uk Flat- & houseshares, flat- & roommates

We came across this great niche site, which all the pet owners should love – PetFriendlyRentals.co.uk lists long term and holiday rentals in UK, where our small or big, furry or feathery friends, are welcome. The website is farely new but since advertising long term rentals is for free, they’ll probably have more London ads in the future as the word spreads.

I don’t think I ever saw the option of searching for a horse-friendly property on any other website before, although they get even more specific than that. For example, the landlord who says OK to dogs in the property, can choose which breeds are not allowed.

Should you want to take your pet along on a vacation or a short stay somewhere in the UK – the holiday accommodation search will be of great help.

Jump to PetFriendlyRentals.co.uk