Yesterday we asked 130 estate agency branches whether they had a tenanted house for one of our investors. 90 of those emails came straight back. Our mail host allows 50 an hour; we sent 130 in about fifteen minutes, and every one of the 90 was returned with the same line — exceeded the maximum emails per hour. The fault was ours, not theirs.
Of the branches that did see it, seven wrote back properly, and two sent auto-replies. One lettings agency volunteered a house that is already tenanted, with a tenant paying on a rolling contract. We are chasing the inspection and the paperwork on that one now.
We made no offers yesterday. We sent no property to an investor either. No market-wide screen ran at all.
In the North East at the moment, the arithmetic is the hard part, not the asking. We screen a lot and show very little, and we would rather publish the week that produced nothing than a number that flatters us.