Playbook, estate agency
Where do I park is two questions and only one is about your office
Nobody asks an agency where it is out of curiosity. They ask because they are driving to a viewing, and the viewing is at the property rather than at the branch. The other half of this question is parking at the property itself, which in most towns means a controlled zone, a permit the occupier applies to the council for, and a bay that may or may not come with the flat. Getting that wrong is not a wrong direction. It is a wrong particular.
Why this is not the general answer
The handling pattern for location and parking holds across every trade. What follows is the part that does not.
- The address the visitor needs is usually not the agency's, because accompanied viewings meet at the property and the branch is only where the keys live between appointments.
- Parking is a feature of the listing rather than a facility of the business, so describing an allocated bay that turns out to be a permit space on the road is a misleading detail about somebody's home rather than a customer service slip.
- The permit itself is issued by the local authority, not by the agency or the landlord, so the honest answer includes the fact that nobody at the agency can obtain one or promise the council will.
- Branch parking only matters on Saturday, when the office sits on a high street with a short stay limit outside it and a stream of people coming in for keys, and that is worth saying rather than leaving somebody circling.
How it arrives
- is there parking with the flat
- is it in a permit zone
- where do i park for the viewing
- have you got a car park at the office
- is the space included in the rent
- can i get a residents permit for that road
What has to be indexed for this to work
| Parking as recorded on each listing | Allocated, garage, driveway, on street, permit zone, or nothing at all, exactly as the particulars state it. The assistant should quote this and attribute it rather than summarise, because a summary of a parking arrangement is a new particular the agency has not checked. |
|---|---|
| The permit position in the areas you cover | Which of your areas are controlled, roughly how the council operates them, and the plain fact that the authority decides eligibility and the number issued. Write it as background rather than as a promise, and link out to the council rather than restating their rules. |
| Where a viewing actually meets | That accompanied viewings meet at the property, that the negotiator brings the keys, and what to do on arriving early. Applicants turning up at the branch for a viewing across town is a small recurring waste that one published sentence removes. |
| The branch address, and getting to it on a Saturday | The street, the nearest car park, the on street restrictions immediately outside, and step free access. This is the only half of the question the agency genuinely controls, so it should be the confident half of the reply. |
The reply
Two different places here, so let me take them separately. For the property, the particulars record what parking comes with it and I would rather quote that than characterise it, since the difference between an allocated bay and a permit space on the road matters [1]. Where a road is in a controlled zone, the permit is issued by the council rather than by us, and they decide who qualifies, so I cannot tell you a permit would be granted [2]. For the branch itself, we are on the high street with short stay bays outside and the car park behind. Viewings meet at the property, not here.
It splits the two locations before answering either, because the visitor has merged them and the rest of the reply depends on pulling them apart. Attributing the parking to the particulars signals how solid the fact is. Naming the council as the decision maker is not a disclaimer, it is the actual answer to whether a permit can be had.
Where it stops
The trigger. The visitor asks whether a permit would be granted to them, or wants a parking arrangement confirmed for a named property before travelling.
I do not want to guess at parking, because you are the one who ends up circling. Send me your name, an email and which property it is, and a negotiator will check what comes with it and confirm before you set off.
It stops answering before it guesses, says who will pick it up, and asks for the one thing that makes a reply possible. Nothing about it reads as a dead end.
Never say this here
Out of bounds
- Never state a parking arrangement that the particulars do not record, because parking changes a letting decision and an improvised answer becomes a description the agency published.
- Never say a resident permit will be available or granted, as that is the local authority's decision and neither the agency nor the landlord controls the allocation.
- Never describe on street or permit parking as allocated, since those are different things and a tenant who has been told one and finds the other has a genuine grievance.
- Never give the branch address to somebody heading to a viewing, because accompanied viewings meet at the property and the wasted journey is theirs.
Questions
- Our listings say parking available and nothing more. Is that enough?
- No, and it is the phrase that causes the trouble. Available covers a garage, a shared yard and a permit road at once, so record which one at the point of listing. It costs a moment and prevents a tenant arriving with a car that has nowhere legal to go.
- Should it explain the council's permit rules?
- It should say that a zone exists and that the council decides, then send people to the council. Restating somebody else's eligibility rules means maintaining them forever, and a stale rule about permits reads as the agency's position.
- What about directions to the branch itself?
- Publish them properly, including Saturday parking and step free access, and let it answer those without hedging. It is the one part of this question with no third party in it, and hedging where you do not need to makes the necessary hedges look weaker.
Keep reading
- Everything for a estate agencyViewings, fees, referencing and deposit rules are answerable at any hour. Valuing a property or discussing an offer is not.
- Handling location and parking in generalWhich entrance, where to park, the step free route, the nearest stop. Genuinely useful information that is almost never written down well.
- Take me off your list is not the same as delete my fileReferencing packs, identity copies and rent ledgers. Some of it belongs to a landlord, some to a scheme, and some cannot go yet.
- Three cancellations that share a word and nothing elseA viewing is a courtesy call, a sole agency instruction has a tie in and a notice period, and a buyer before exchange owes nothing.
- The money in question is usually not the agency's moneyMost of what gets called a refund here is money the agency never earned: a scheme's deposit, client rent, a supplier already paid.
Try it on your own material
Upload a document or point it at your site, paste one line of HTML, then ask it something only your business could answer.