NovaLoca Blog

As another month draws to a close, another set of stats are released about the state of the residential and commercial property markets. Halifax today announced a 1.1% rise in the cost of residential properties during July (although they remain cautious in saying this will continue) whilst the RICS Q2 Commercial Property Survey drew the following conclusions of the commercial property market:

Demand

Overall tenant demand for commercial property continued to decline although the rate of decline did ease. This stabilisation was especially shown in the offices market, and, to a lesser extent, industrial properties, although demand for retail spaces continued to fall, especially in London and the Midlands. However, London did show mild increases in demand for office space whilst the industrial market showed declines in London and the Midlands but stabilised across the rest of the country.

Enquiries

Across the country, except the Midlands, enquiries for office space, at the least, stabilised and in some areas moderately increased. Whilst outside of London and the Midlands industrial property enquiries rose. Enquires for retail spaces continued to fall UK wide, although at a slower rate than previous quarters.

Availability

The level of commercial property floor space continued to rise, although at a much reduced rate than the previous quarter, across the UK with the exception being industrial properties in London where levels remained the same. Continuing the trend since the start of the downturn, retail properties continued to show the highest rises in availability. Whilst offices in central London showed a similar rate of availability as the previous quarter, offices in the Southern Counties showed a lesser rate of availability. Industrial properties across the UK recorded a reduced rate of availability.    

Whether you are looking for available commercial property or trying to sell or let your office, industrial unit or retail space we would love to hear from you: Do these reported trends reflect the experiences you are having in your area? Contact us and let us know your thoughts.

Holding an Energy Performance Certificate (EPC) for all commercial properties being let, sold or built in England and Wales became compulsory on the 1^st October 2008 and now it is the turn of commercial property in Scotland.

From the 1^st December 2008 all commercial properties for sale in Scotland must have an EPC. However, owners with commercial properties to let in Scotland have until the 4^th January 2009 to get their EPC’s ready. Having said that, sorting this out sooner rather than later will mean delays in being able to advertise properties on for rent after this date are avoided.

As a rough guide all commercial retail spaces, warehouses, industrial units, factories and offices will require an EPC. However, there are some exceptions to this. An EPC is not needed if the building:

· Has a gross internal area of less than 50 square metres

· Is a place of worship

· Is a temporary building intended for use for less than two years, or

· Is a low energy demand building, e.g. a barn.

To find out more information about the requirements for EPC’s for commercial property in Scotland visit EPC Scotland.

We are often asked by commercial property agents whether NovaLoca is an appropriate tool for marketing their commercial property. The answer is simple: Yes! NovaLoca lists any type of commercial property whether it is an industrial unit or office space, or even a petrol station, laboratory or a hotel. However, these queries lead us to dig a bit deeper. We have analysed property enquiries made via NovaLoca over recent months and discovered some interesting trends relating to enquiries about properties of different sizes and locations.

Larger buildings often get better representation in online and printed commercial property marketing thanks to their larger advertising budgets. 35% of leads generated via NovaLoca for clients have been for commercial buildings of over 4,000 sq ft suggesting NovaLoca is good place to market larger properties. However, NovaLoca is also proving very beneficial for smaller units where marketing budgets may be much less. Properties with a floor space of less than 4000 sq ft currently account for the remaining 65% of enquiries made via NovaLoca. At just £50 per listing for six months marketing commercial property on NovaLoca offers great value especially for these smaller properties.

NovaLoca’s nationwide coverage is also proving attractive to agents across the UK with commercial property to market. Since January this year, 46% of enquiries through NovaLoca have been for properties in the North, with 54% relating to those in the South. As northern cities such as Manchester and Birmingham become increasing recognised as centres of business it may be expected that the gap between the north and south commercial property market will close further.

Miranda Munn, Managing Director of NovaLoca, also noticed “a 27% month-on-month fall in enquiries via NovaLoca in October as the industry appeared to hold its breath with front-page news of the financial markets going into free-fall. However, now half way through November the number of enquiries is already increasing again to near-normal levels”. She went on to note that while agents are likely to have searched for property for their clients with some urgency during October as the economic downturn hit the headlines, that the majority of enquiries on NovaLoca come direct from commercial occupiers rather than property agents. Therefore, the website’s statistics are likely to represent a true picture of the overall mood of occupiers across the UK.

Smaller units and those in the North have become more popular in recent weeks, but only time will tell if these movements are the beginning of a longer-term trend.

For further information, please visit www.novaloca.com or call 0845 094 7902.

Commonly regarded as the centre of trade and commerce for the North West of England, Manchester has been placed among the top 20 “best cities to locate a business today” by European Cities Monitor. Additional research by Cushman and Wakefield found that Manchester has retained its position from 2007 as the UK’s second most business friendly city (after London) in the 2008 UK’s Cities Monitor.

Manchester was found to perform particularly well in being an ideal location for company headquarters as well as back office functions, whilst the research also went on to conclude that Manchester can expect the second largest (again after London) influx of companies locating there over the next five years meaning that the need for new commercial property is set to increase.

With predictions like this it is no wonder that companies such as the Co-op bank are investing in Manchester’s commercial property market.

So commercial property in Manchester is looking good and set to rise. But what does it actually look like? Well with  Birds’ Eye imagery of the Greater Manchester region available on NovaLoca’s property maps you can now find out as you view Manchester commercial property from the north, south, east and west at a 45° angle; clearly view what the location is like as well as the building itself.

Aerial and road view imagery which is also available on NovaLoca’s maps allows the user to discover the wider area. With all the properties shown on one map with a summary of their details, properties can be easily compared. Other map features include local area information which will allow you to discover the location of the nearest primary and secondary schools and day care nurseries, and an in map search tool so you can alter your search criteria without leaving the map. The result: you can discover exactly what commercial property in Manchester looks like.

Contact us to find out more about finding your new property in Manchester with NovaLoca.com.

Whether you are starting a new business or relocating an established one, choosing the right commercial property is important but just as important is where the property is located.

Have you considered all the factors to making the right choice? The European Cities Monitor by Cushman and Wakefield highlights the following as being key factors when choosing where to locate your business. The two most important were concluded as being:

· The availability of a qualified workforce – are the right people with the right skills living in the area your company will be based?

· Quality telecommunications – does the area have sufficient internet bandwidth and speed and good mobile phone coverage?

Other factors worthy of consideration include:

· Access to markets, customers and clients – is your market located nearby or can they reach you easily?

· Access to national and international transport links – if you have goods to transport, do you have access to reliable transport links whether road, rail, air or ferry?

Factors given lesser importance overall by the survey, but which may be worth considering include:

· Value for money of the commercial property

· The climate local government creates for business, e.g. tax, financial incentives etc.

· Availability of office space

· Cost of staff

· Quality of life and freedom from pollution

Although the importance you place on each of these factors will depend on the type of business you have as well as its size, they are all worth considering as getting it wrong will be expensive both financially and in terms of time.

NovaLoca’s ‘Browse by Region’ function gives a brief overview of the counties in the UK covering some of the points listed above and providing a starting place for your research. To get an understanding of the commercial property on offer in a given region or to find a property in your preferred location use NovaLoca’s easy search and discover a comprehensive list of industrial units, offices, retail spaces or land available in that region. By viewing the property on an interactive map, which include local area information and road, aerial and bird’s eye view imagery you can get a full visual experience of the property – a great tool if you are not currently located near to where you are looking for property.

To find out more about finding your next commercial property with NovaLoca.com then visit the site or contact us.

Calling all those interested in innovative ideals! NovaLoca, the UK’s best commercial property search engine will, in the next few days, become the site of the UK’s first implementation of Street Level View images and all before Google^© release Street View images in their UK maps.

To bring Street Level View to the commercial market, NovaLoca teamed up with the small innovative Italian company Seety, specialists in taking, processing and mapping images of city streets. Having already mapped many Italian cities in this way, Seety added central London to the list earlier this year and it is this latest imagery that is to be added to NovaLoca’s existing mapping feature.

Commercial property occupiers will now have the option to search for their ideal property using the existing map features of in-map searching and aerial, hybrid and Bird’s Eye imagery but now with Street Level View they will also be able to ‘stand’ in front of the property, see the one next door and take a ‘walk’ to the nearest tube station or shop. To put it simply, NovaLoca will be making it even easier for occupiers to find property and best of all, this new technology means less time will be wasted, for both occupier and agent, on site visits which do not result in a sale or let.

For those of you concerned about privacy, as standard practise Seety are careful about the resolution the images are taken in, to ensure a high quality picture to the user but one which does not make people easily identifiable. In addition to this they review each of the thousands of images they collect and blur out all faces and car registration plates that may have still been visible.

At NovaLoca we are really excited about how this latest development will make marketing commercial property even easier for agents as well as being the first company to be doing this. Keep an eye on this blog for the announcement of the release of Street Level View in our maps and in the mean time if you want to find out more about this exciting development or about marketing your commercial property with NovaLoca please do contact a member of the team on 0844 3575 260 or email info@novaloca.com.

Email has become the main form of communication between commercial property agents and their occupiers, but does this form of correspondence reflect your agency’s standards of professionalism and customer care and are the sales opportunities taken?

What Has Been Said?

Commercial property search engine, NovaLoca, allows occupiers to contact the property agent directly from the website. The agents replies are then fed back to the occupier also via the site. Some of the common replies from agents we see include:

What Does this Mean for Your Business?

• Customer services: If you don’t send a message with an attachment or don’t bother to reply at all you are unlikely to give the impression of a commercial property agency that cares about their occupiers or that will go the extra mile to find them the best property which suits their requirements.
• Professionalism: If you reply to say the property is sold or that you are no longer dealing with the property this is likely to give the impression that your records and advertising is out of date. This will not give the professional ‘on top of everything’ image you are probably striving for.
• Opportunities missed: Simple one line replies such as those above don’t make the most of the opportunity you have to engage a new occupier. You have an occupier in front of you who is looking for a property, although you may not be able to fill their requirement now do they go away knowing who you are and what you can offer them? Will they contact you in the future? If they receive one of the replies above, the answer is probably ‘no’ and you have missed an opportunity.

How Can You Make the Most of Your Email Replies?

• Introduce yourself and your agency. This does not need to be long, just enough to ensure the occupier knows who you are, what you can offer and how they can contact you in future. This could be a pre-written email which you simply attach the necessary property details to when an enquiry comes in.
• Make sure that when you say you are sending an attachment you actually send one. If may be worthwhile noting in the text of the email what you will be attaching, therefore the occupier will know exactly what they should be receiving and can ask for anything that is missing.
• Keep your property advertising up to date to avoid occupiers contacting you about a property that is no longer available. This will save their time as well as yours.
• If you are contacted about a property that is no longer available or which you are no longer representing reply to the occupier and tell them this but go the extra mile and send them a list of similar vacant properties which you are currently marketing. There is still the opportunity for a sale here even if the initial enquiry does not work out so make the most of it.
• Most importantly of all, reply to them with something! You are never going to make the most of an enquiry if they hear nothing from you.

If you have any more examples of what not to say in an email or for more information about how NovaLoca can help you find occupiers for your commercial property please contact the NovaLoca customer services team on 0844 3575 260 or email info@novaloca.com.

It has been four months since Energy Performance Certificate’s (EPC’s) began to be phased into the commercial property market and only three months until they will become compulsory for all commercial property over 50m² being sold, let or built. So what exactly do they mean for a commercial property owner?

What will the EPC tell me?

After an Energy Assessor has made an assessment of the property, the details are loaded into government-approved software which will produce the EPC for the property. This certificate will:

· Provide general information about the energy efficiency and carbon emissions of the building;

· Give a rating on a standardised scale of A to G (A being the best) of how energy efficient the property is. This allows the property to be accurately compared to similar buildings;

· Make recommendations about how the property’s energy efficiency, and therefore it’s rating, could be improved, as well as giving a realistic indication of what grading the property could achieve if the recommendations are put in place.

What Can I Do To Improve My Properties’ Energy Efficiency?

Whether your reasons for being interested in the results of the required survey are based on an environmental concern and wanting to “go green”, or the desire to save money on the buildings’ running cost during the increase in fuel prices the fact is there are some very simple measures you can take to improve the energy efficiency of your office space, retail premises or industrial unit.

· Reduce waste and recycle what waste you do have: reuse paper; cancel junk mail and think before you print.

· Use energy efficiently: turn the heating off rather than just opening a window; turn lights off when they are not needed; use energy efficient light bulbs; put electrical equipment (e.g. water cooler) on a timer so it turns off at the end of the day, and fit draught excluders on doors and windows.

· Use water efficiently: ensure water appliances are efficient and fix leaking taps etc.

For further ideas about improving your commercial property’s energy rating visit Business Link and use their questionnaire to help you assess your current energy efficiency level.

How Will the EPC’s affect the Marketing of My Commercial Property?

Many articles have been published claiming the positive and negative effects EPC’s could have on the marketability of commercial properties in relation to the perceived costs of high or low energy efficient properties.

The Manchester Evening News carried a story suggesting that although the “government wants to encourage tenants to move into industrial and commercial buildings which are more environmentally friendly… the introduction of EPC’s may well lead to the opposite happening over the long term, by making less environmentally friendly buildings less expensive and therefore more popular”. (Read the full article here.) This implies that owners of commercial property with a good energy efficiency rating could find it more difficult to market their property and find occupiers due to the perceived higher cost compared to lower efficiency properties. However, we would suggest that this higher initial cost will soon be recouped as the running and maintenance costs will be reduced in the longer term, whereas the opposite would be true of a less energy efficient property where the initial outlay could be less but the long term costs are likely to be higher as energy is wasted. If an occupier thinks for the long term they are likely to be put off by this and choose the more energy efficient property instead.

In addition to this, owners of industrial units, offices and retail space which are eligible to have an EPC are entitled to claim tax breaks against the cost of installing systems which will help to make the property more energy efficient. This comes under a new government incentive to encourage more energy efficiency amongst commercial property as well as to help property agents and owners “stay ahead of the game” (read the full article here) and make the marketing of their property easier based on the energy rating they receive.

Marketing commercial property will now require additional focus on the energy performance rating it holds and the benefits this will bring to the occupier. To find out more information about the energy efficiency of the commercial properties listed on NovaLoca and to find out how to get your commercial property listed, contact the customer services team on 08443575260.

It’s that time of year again… time for your annual trip away but whilst you are sunning yourself on the beach your customers are still trying to contact you. What do they do when they don’t get a reply because you’re not there to do so? The answer: they approach your competitors instead. Obviously your holiday is well deserved but we doubt you want to lose customers as a result.

NovaLoca’s analysis of enquiry data found that 55% of enquiries made to an agent over a three month period were made by email. These are going to continue to land in your inbox even when you’re on holiday. Therefore, what do you do, if anything, to ensure your email enquiries are answered and the customer is not lost?

If you have never thought about this or you’re not sure what you can do, here are a few very simple strategies most email providers will allow you to do:

· Set up an auto reply: Whenever an email is received to your inbox a reply email will automatically be sent to the sender. This email should be brief, polite and professional stating:

o that you are currently out of the office;

o when you expect to be back in the office and available to be contacted again;

o that you will contact them as soon as you can on your return;

o the telephone and email details of a colleague that can be contacted in an emergency whilst you are away.

You can set a start and end date during which these auto replies will be sent, or if you don’t do this, make sure you turn the auto reply function off as soon as you return to the office. Also, remember to update the content of the auto reply email each time you use it. A message which says you’ll be back in the office on the 3^rd Jan 2006 won’t go down too well when it’s now the 28^th July 2008!

Be aware that if your customers are contacting you through the ‘contact the agent’ tool on a commercial property portal, such as NovaLoca, the auto-reply will go to the administrators of the portal site and not the customer contacting you. Therefore, they remain unaware of the reason for not getting a response from you. The best way to avoid this situation is to forward your emails to a colleague (below) who is able to respond to the enquiry quickly.

In Microsoft Outlook 2007 auto replies can be set up using ‘Out Of Office Assistant’ found in the ‘Tools’ section. Alternatively use the ‘Help’ section to find out how you can set up auto replies with your email software.

· Forward your emails: Set your email account to forward any emails you receive whilst you are away to a colleague who can respond to them in your absence. This is a good idea especially if you know you receive enquiry emails from customers. Your colleague can reply to the enquiry before the customer looks elsewhere to find their commercial property which they may do if the only other option is to wait until you get back.

Make sure that the person who will be receiving your email will not be overloaded and unable to reply to the volume of emails (yours and their own). If this could be the case then set up ‘conditional forwarding’. Select emails from each source you are likely to receive emails from to be forwarded to a specific person, e.g. all emails received from NovaLoca are forwarded to your partner, emails from a property owner are forwarded to your administrator whilst emails from within your organisation are not forwarded at all.

If you do forward your emails, set up an auto reply as well so the sender is aware that you are not able to respond personally but that one of your colleagues will be in touch instead (give the details of the person they can expect to hear from).

In Microsoft Outlook 2007 email forwarding can be set up using ‘Direct replies to’ found in the ‘Options’ section. Alternatively use the ‘Help’ section to find out how you can set up email forwarding with your email software.

· On your return: When you get back to the office, make sure you follow up on all emails received in your absence. Debrief with the person who has been responding to your emails whilst you were away and call or email those who did try to contact you to let them know that you are available again to handle any further enquiries they have, and to make sure their original enquiry was dealt with sufficiently.

The most important point to remember is that your customers want a reply as quickly as possible. If they are left to wait for one with no explanation of the delay they are very likely to look elsewhere. At the very least you should inform your customers why there may be a delay in replying to their enquiry. However, it is always preferable, if possible, to answer the enquiry straight away by forwarding emails to a colleague who is available to do so.

Most email software will have a tool to allow you to create auto replies and forward emails received. We would strongly suggest investing the time in finding out how to do this with the software you use and making it a habit within your company to put these practices in place so you can relax on your holiday safe in the knowledge you’re not losing customers because you’re not there to reply to them. If you want a little help in where to start, please call one the NovaLoca customer services team on 0844 3575 260. Enjoy your holidays!

Every commercial property agent is aiming to attract potential occupiers to the property they have on their books. If this is you, then you need to be available when your customers call. If they can’t speak to you then they may go elsewhere to find their commercial property. But with meetings and site visits filling your day and often taking you out of the office, how do you know when your customers are likely to call and when you should be available to answer their enquiry?

When Do Your Customers Contact You?

Here at NovaLoca we analysed property enquiry data over a three month period and found that 45% of enquiries are made by telephone suggesting that people want to speak to people when looking for commercial property. 55% of enquiries where made via email. With this in mind we analysed the data further to discover at what times throughout the day these enquiries were made.

· Telephone enquiries are fairly consistent throughout the working day (9am – 5pm) with peaks at 10am and midday.

· Few calls are made before 9am or after 5pm, with no calls at all between 10pm and 7am.

· Email enquiries peak between 11am and 2pm.

· Enquiries via email drop off after 4pm, but increase again at 8pm before declining throughout late evening.

· Email enquiries are made throughout the evening and night.

When should you be available to speak to your customers?

The data suggests that the first hour of the working day is important for ensuring enquiries made overnight (by telephone and email) are responded to. The data indicates that replying to emails may be where your time is most needed first thing in the morning. Overnight telephone enquiries should also be followed up during this period.

Mid morning to mid afternoon (10am to 3pm) appears to be a busy period for both telephone and email enquiries. Therefore, it would be beneficial to ensure there are sufficient people available during this period to speak to customers directly as well as responding to their emails.

Although the number of telephone and email enquiries decline during late afternoon they do continue, especially emails. Therefore, your time is well spent responding to enquiries during this part of the day too. However, fewer resources may be needed at this time than during the middle of the day.

Read our full article to discover more about how this information could affect your commercial property agency or contact the NovaLoca customer services team on 08443575260 or email info@novaloca.com to find out how you could conduct your own research and analysis of how and when your customers contact you.