PRESS RELEASE: Belgarum kick-starting 2015
2015 CHARITY OF THE YEAR Belgarum Estate Agents would like to thank all of the charities who put themselves forward as a nomination for Belgarum's 2015 Charity of the Year. They were overwhelmed by the level of response from such an array of worthy local causes. The staff at Belgarum took a vote for their preferred charity and whilst there were many great charities in contention, the winner of the team vote is a fantastic charity helping many vulnerable people. Belgarum are delighted to announce the charity they will be supporting throughout 2015 is Trinity Winchester. Trinity Winchester's vision is "To improve the lives and promote positive, long-term changes for people affected by homelessness and social isolation in Hampshire." Tim Corke, Fundraising Manager says, "On behalf of the staff, volunteers and importantly our service users, I would like to thank the Belgarum staff for choosing Trinity to be their nominated charity throughout 2015. We look forward to meeting and working with you over the coming months." NEW STAFF Belgarum welcome 3 new members of staff which strengthens their already established and experience team. Lisa Beresmith joins as Assistant Lettings Manager in the busy lettings division which celebrated its 25th anniversary last year. Paul Stephens and Seanne Stewart join the dynamic sales team as sales negotiators. Belgarum are thrilled to welcome them and their skills and look forward to achieving further success with them on board in 2015. ON THE MARKET Belgarum have joined Agents' Mutual, a co-operative of high street estate agents who will be launching a new property portal OnTheMarket.com on 26th January 2015. Agents Mutual is a not-for-profit organisation and OnTheMarket.com will be the only portal to be endorsed by both the National Association of Estate Agents (NAEA) and the Association of Residential Letting Agents (ARLA). Agents' Mutual's Chief Executive, Ian Springett is confident that OnTheMarket will add genuine competition in the market and allow property hunters a fantastic new platform to search for property. Their vision is for OnTheMarket.com to become the "go-to" portal for consumers to get an overview of available properties on the market. To build consumer awareness, Springett states: "Our multi-million pound advertising and marketing budget is in place. We will run commercials on prime-time TV, full page adverts in the national press and have plenty of online marketing. This campaign will attract consumers to the website as a "must view" destination with a unique set of listings." Belgarum, along with many other Winchester agents will be begin advertising all of their properties on OnTheMarket.com as from 26th January. The stipulation with this new portal is that an agent can only advertise on one of the other leading portals. Ultimately this means dropping either Rightmove or Zoopla. After extensive research Belgarum have decided to cease advertising on Zoopla given the majority of traffic and customer leads come via Rightmove. Zoopla has a lot of traction in some areas of the UK however the Winchester market has much greater presence on and interaction via Rightmove.