2024, you’ve been a blast!

At Bartlett & Partners, we are feeling pretty pleased with ourselves to be honest, it has to be said. We have had a lovely year. It has not been an easy year – the property market has been in a challenging place. 

But our whole ethos is about making the effort. Quite frankly, we love a challenge! It’s boring when it’s easy. In fact what we are really all about is putting everything we have into very few properties in Richmond, Twickenham and Teddington – and that is what gives us the 90% success rate that we have; 9 out of 10 properties that we take on go through to a successful sale, miles higher than the 53% national average and – something we are incredibly proud of – almost the polar opposite of the London average, where only around 38% of properties successfully sell (source: Kate Faulkener writing in The Negotiator Magazine, quoting data from TwentyEA compiled by Christopher Watkin).

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An Estate Agent Doing Things Differently

Thinking a little outside the box is where we come into our own, and where we get to show that what we do works. Truthfully, 2024 has given us those opportunities in spades and we have loved every minute of it.

Take Mortlake Road in Kew, to give you just one example. We don’t like to brag in the sort of ‘we’re better than you’ way that you do see from Estate Agents from time to time – but this story really doesn’t hit home without setting the scene first, which is that this one had languished on the market for 9 months (9 months!) with a traditional local Estate Agent.

We took a look at what was going on. The price was right - £1,750,000 – nothing wrong with that. The marketing itself though… well, without wanting to disparage, let us just say it was poor. Not in an unusual way, sadly – just in the normal, flat, uninspiring way that we see too often. So of course, we shook it up – Bartlett & Partners style! A total revamp of the marketing – new professional photos and floor plan, which goes without saying, as well as a thoughtful and tasteful property description, and of course a Bartlett & Partners property video.

What came next is where things get more different still – the launch. Not to Rightmove, Zoopla and all those normal spots, but a launch out through our social media channels; 70,000 views on the video alone – and, ultimate proof of the pudding, we had an offer agreed just two weeks later. 

The story of the Mortlake Road sale is a good one – but it isn’t by any means unusual, except for the fact that all our sales are different; we don’t have a ‘one size fits all’ approach, which means there is an inherent inevitability that they will be different. What unifies them all however is our dedication to the sale, thinking differently and doing what it takes to get the result – it is not left to chance, it is by design, following specific, thought through marketing strategies which we execute with intent. 

And we are proving it works.

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Leading the way on Social Media Property Marketing

Our social media has perhaps been the story of our 2024. Our videos in particular have exploded, with the reach running into the millions of views, but with an incredibly strong local following here in Richmond, Twickenham and Teddington. The absolute proof came in the oddest of places – TK Maxx. There Darren was, out doing a bit of shopping, and a lady stopped him and said: “Sorry, is it OK if my little boy says something to you?”

Well, of course it was, Darren said, and so her little boy stepped forward, and bringing his two hands together in a clapboard motion in front of his chest, the young’un said: “And that’s a cut!” – exactly the way we sign off our property marketing videos!

It’s actually those little things that tell us that we’re on the right track. 

From our ‘Twelve Pubs of Christmas’ to our ‘Coming Soon’ Teaser Videos, the way we have seen social media marketing work for our clients in 2024 has been out of this world.

Cross Deep Gardens, for example (and again – just as in the case with the aforementioned sale on Mortlake Road, it is just one of many). This property listed at £1,200,000. We launched the marketing campaign across our social media channels – again before hitting the portals –, picked up a silly number of views, and soon had viewings getting booked in straight from Instagram and Facebook. We still launched it to the normal places, Rightmove, Zoopla and everywhere else a Richmond property owner should expect to see their home advertised – it is no stone unturned with us – and two weeks later, we tied the sale up at above the asking price. Now that is always easier when there are multiple interested parties – but there would not have been the same buzz of viewings that led to those interested parties, had it not been social media.

Traditional media is great. We love Rightmove! You’d be surprised how many agents don’t, oddly. But Rightmove does put a buyer in control, as they as browsers set their own search criteria. The beauty of our video marketing, honed to reach a social-media savvy audience, is that we can put these properties in front of buyers who might never otherwise see it through Rightmove and other sources, leveraging the power of technology. It’s clever, even if it isn’t rocket science, and truthfully it is something other Agents could do too… except that they can’t. By merit of working for 60, 80, maybe 100 clients at any one time, they simply cannot inject the same thought, time and process into this sort of marketing that we can – and this is why our results through Social Media speak for themselves.

We fully expect it to play a massive part in our journey next year. 

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Looking Ahead to Helping Richmond, Twickenham and Teddington Homeowners in 2025

We are going to turn five years old in 2025. It’s a fantastic milestone. And some people ask what we are going to do to grow the business once we pass that mark.

To be honest, for us it is not about growth. Not growth for growth’s sake, at least. Contrary to almost all Estate Agents, it would seem, we are proud to keep it small and boutique. Fifteen properties maximum is our staple, a mix of sold subject to contract and for sale. It allows us to absolutely focus on the clients we have, and not just the job that they are asking us to do for them, but the result that they deeply wish us to achieve for them. We wish to do that too, and we cannot do that if we are distracted by always chasing extra properties for sale – after all, 30% of the job is finding a great buyer, 70% is making sure the sale goes through. Sometimes it is about the really high-tech cutting-edge things to make all that happen, and sometimes it’s simply a new take on the very basics. Our customers love our WhatsApp groups for example – such a simple thing to do, for each set of clients, to create a single place where we and they can liaise so that everyone knows what is going on. It’s not Rocket Science… it is Estate Agency, done properly.

So, for us, 2025 is about more of the same. Great service and excellent marketing of exquisite properties, and being a force for good in our local community here in the London Borough of Richmond.

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2024, you’ve been great… but that, as they say, is a cut.

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