Duquesa Property Managers - Update
Thursday, April 23, 2009
I am horrified to notice that my last blog was August 2008! That means that almost a year has gone by without me even realising. I need a life!!
What has happened in the last - god how many months – well unfortunately we had to let our admin help go so we are back to my mother Joy and I. Joy has been catapulted into the 21st century as she had to learn how to email and take this on to ensure our owners were kept up to date with the management checks. After some near misses with the laptop nearly being flung out the window she has now got the hang of it – or almost anyway.
We lost a couple of properties at the end of last year due to repossessions – a sad experience and very emotional for some of our clients. We have just lost management on another property as the owners are really struggling since becoming redundant in the UK due to the current financial climate it looks as though they may have to sell their property – if they can.
Two separate agencies tried to take properties from us by emailing our owners - very underhand but seems quite common – dog eat dog - luckily for us our clients are happy and didn´t want to move. So any agencies out there – get your own clients!!
There also seems to be more and more “neighbours doing favours” for cash and this set up can be hard to compete with when taxes and social insurance contributions have to be paid.
But amidst all this doom and gloom we try to keep positive and keep our heads down and work hard. We are continually updating our website and this year had the greatest number of returning clients for holiday rentals we have seen so far. Our portfolio is extending and we have just rented one apartment to a family from Russia, our Canadian guests were here during February and the Norwegians are always popular as are the French and Portuguese and let’s not forget the Spanish of course.
We are in the process of translating our site into Spanish – as we can´t afford to pay anyone to do this it is taking a while to do – I am looking at it as a huge lesson in Spanish! With that and the children´s homework I should be fluent soon!
Hasta Luego – now where´s that online dictionary?
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