Daily Mail UK Property Awards 2007
Winners of the Best UK Estate Agency Website and
Best Real Estate Agent (Midlothian)
Welcome to our award-winning website. With an online presence since 1998, the site was redesigned and relaunched in July 2005 to present a user friendly source for the property services that we provide.
Our Awards
Rettie & Co. were awarded four star awards in two categories at the prestigious Daily Mail Property Awards 2007: Best UK Estate Agency Website and Best Real Estate Agency (Midlothian).
For the second year running Rettie & Co. has been recognised for our website www.rettie.co.uk. This reflects the continued investment of both time and resource to ensure the website contines to meet the evolving needs of our customers.
Despite mounting pressure from large UK wide agencies breaking into new regions, Rettie & Co. is well ahead of the competition and has been recognised by being awarded 4 stars for Real Estate Agency (Midlothian). This accolade comes as a result of working at high standards, providing excellent levels of service and raising awareness and integrity of the property-finder industry.
About the Daily Mail UK Property Awards 2007
Now in their third year, the aim of these awards is to distinguish the highest levels of achievement in a range of property related fields. Estate Agency, Development, Property, Apartment and Property Finder categories are entered at county level, while special categories are at national level (UK) including the Best Estate Agency Website in the UK. There were a record number of entries for the 2007 awards. More information can be found on The Property Awards website.
Entries were critiqued by a 23 strong panel of judges, whose knowledge of the property industry is second to none and unsurpassed by any other porperty awards. Chaired by Eric Pickles, British Shadow Secretary of State, this years judges included Imtiaz Farookhi, chief executive of the National Housebuilding Council; Peter Bolton King, chief executive of the National Association of Estate Agents; and Phil Spencer, property expert and presenter of Channel 4's Location and Relocation TV shows.
So, just what makes our website so special?
Rettie & Co. achieved sales to the value of £392.5 million in 2006/7 and the website is key component of the firm's success.
There are a number of ways you can search for properties reflecting the variety of different ways in which individual visitors use the site. The 'Portfolio' feature allows you to track the properties you are interested in and receive updates on any change in its status. You can also set up 'Email Alerts' so that updates can be delivered according to your chosen criteria. We pride ourselves on the accuracy of the information on the site which reflects 'real time' events in our offices and we try to keep download times to a minimum.
The number of unique visitis to the site has increased steadily since the relaunch in 2005 and exceeded 113,000 for the first time in June 2007, representing an increase of over 100% on June 2006 numbers.
With over 100,000 unique visits a month visiting the site, the following map shows their spread across the globe:
Examples of how www.rettie.co.uk works for our clients
Generally, over £100 million of purchaser interest was registered through the firm in the week prior to receiving the award and the product launch for the Quartermile development in Edinburgh's city centre took over £25 million of sales through the website prior to the marketing suite opening.
With demand as it is presently, many potential purchasers who wish to move to the Borders use the web to do their research before coming to the area to view therefore we find a mix of web marketing and simple "For Sale" board outside is often all we need to make a sale. For example, we marketed 13 St Cuthberts View in Oxton in this way at offers over £199,000 and it sold within three days to a purchaser who just happened to see the Rettie & Co. sign when passing.
Similarly our Melrose office recently sold East Faldonside Lodge, a three bedded property with lodge, stables and six acres which was only advertised online for eight days at offers over £485,000. Whilst on our website, the property situated in central Melrose, received 650 hits and the sales particulars were downloaded 89 times. East Faldonside Lodge is now under offer pending sale.
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