The ScoTTiSh reSidenTial ProPerTy SPecialiSTS

LocaL knowLedge. nationaL reach

Simon rettie, FricS Managing director

rettie & co are Scotland’s leading independent firm of property specialists. We sell quality property in Scotland to customers worldwide – from flats and houses in edinburgh, Glasgow and throughout central Scotland, to country houses, farms, and sporting and agricultural estates. We also let and manage residential property across Scotland.

Our focus on Scottish property means we truly understand the market – both what is happening at the moment, and what is likely to happen in the future. Scottish property is not just one small part of our business – it is the entirety of our business.

As well as selling and letting residential property, we work with many of the leading house-builders, property developers and investors in Scotland, providing consultancy and research, and land and development services. We know the market.

As we are an independent professional firm, owned and managed by our executive directors, the advice we offer is truly impartial. Far from being a small cog in a corporate wheel, we can respond rapidly to the needs of clients. We are transparent in all our dealings.

Whatever the type of property you wish to sell, our residential and country sales teams can provide expert knowledge and quality, well researched advice. In all our work we aim high, securing the best prices and buyers for every property, whilst providing the best service and value for every seller.

© angus clyne

no-obligation market appraisal

whY SeLL throUgh rettie & co?

There are many reasons to sell your property through rettie & co. We have expert teams of professionals dedicated to the sale of privately owned residential and country property across Scotland. our staff have in-depth knowledge of the local and national markets – whether you want to sell a country house, a farm or rural estate, a family home or a city centre townhouse or flat.

Our sales teams offer all our clients high quality, focused marketing campaigns, excellent service and superb value. We use many different channels to sell to buyers all over the world: • our five agency offices across

Scotland

• our associated office in London’s Pall Mall

• our own website and other

leading internet property websites

• our database of people who are actively looking to buy

• our long established contacts with relocation agents

• our prominent, well designed press advertising

As the leading Scottish independent estate agency, we sell significant volumes of town and country property, in all Scotland’s regions. But whatever the size and location of your property, we will treat it individually. We will always take the time to find out what you want, and we can put together a bespoke marketing package or arrange a discreet private sale if you prefer. Unlike many of our competitors, Rettie & Co are regulated by the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (RICS). We abide by strict rules of professional conduct and client accounting procedures.

“Congratulations on finding us such a charming couple to buy the house! … This is the fourth property you have sold for us, and just as fast, in spite of the recession”ronald Barnett, Thirdpart house, crail, Fife

“in the Scottish property

market, the rettie name

stands for exceptional service

and excellent results”

Tony Perriam, MricS residential Sales

regulated by ricS

If you are thinking about selling your property, we are very happy to offer you a market appraisal. A member of our team will visit the property, and we will give you a report on general market conditions and the specific sale prospects for your property. This service is free of charge and incurs no obligation to sell through us.

To arrange a visit, please contact your local Rettie & Co office.

Marketing and advertising

For each property we sell, we plan a bespoke marketing campaign. This usually includes advertising in local and national newspapers; producing a marketing brochure for the property; and promoting the property through our own website and through key property websites. In all our marketing and advertising we use quality photography, designed to show your property at its very best and stir the interest of potential buyers.

Nowadays, the internet is at the heart of how we market a property. Our recently redesigned award-winning website is our principal sales tool, generating an average of 80,000 visits per month. Alongside this, we market our properties on the leading Scottish and international property websites. Crucially, this enables us to reach an international audience more effectively than via a network of international branch offices focusing on local clients and their properties.

.

Press advertising remains important to much of our target audience. Depending on your property and its likely market, we may recommend placing an advertisement in relevant newspapers, including The Scotsman, The Herald, Scotland on Sunday, The Sunday Times, the Borders Southern Reporter, Aberdeen Press & Journal and Dundee Courier. Certain magazines, including Country Life, Scottish Field, Scottish Farmer and The Field,can also provide an effective platform for advertising, with a longer shelf life than newspapers. In all our promotional campaigns, we are careful to use your approved budget cost effectively.

Editorial coverage markedly raises the profile of any sale. We have excellent relations with property editors, and our clients benefit from exceptional coverage within the editorial sections of all leading Scottish titles, as well as within national papers including The Times, The Sunday Times and Daily Telegraph. Such exposure is free of charge.

When you put a property on the market, you want the right people to notice it – whether they are in Scotland, elsewhere in the UK or overseas. This is where the experience and contacts of rettie & co’s residential and country sales teams are invaluable.

Rettie & Co are well known for the quality and reach of our marketing campaigns, and for our ability to match properties and buyers. Our preliminary sales advice and targeted marketing campaigns are highly effective at generating interest and at maximising the value of your property.

A key sales tool is our database of registered people who are actively looking to buy a property and are in a position to do so. At any one time, there are over 10,000 users on the database, and we send daily email alerts of suitable properties that come onto the market.

Private sales

We also use the database to arrange private sales. With this approach, we sell directly to our registered database, rather than putting the property on the open market. With a private sale, there is no ‘For Sale’ board, advertising, or internet presence. For both buyers and sellers, particularly individuals with a high public profile, the process is more discreet and often less stressful than an open market sale.

how we can heLp – OUR IN-DEPTh kNOWLEDgE AND hIgh qUALITy MARkETINg CAMPAIgNS WILL hELP yOU REACh ThE RIghT FINANCIAL OUTCOME

In the past ten years Rettie & Co have privately sold properties totalling around £300 million. The number of prospective buyers registering interest in a private transaction has grown markedly during this period. The average price in a private sale is in excess of £1 million, and most properties sold in this way are family homes and larger houses in towns and cities, or prestigious country houses, farms and estates.

“research into sales prices

compared to asking prices

and home report valuations

allows us to advise our clients

about how they can best

market their property and

maximise the sale price”

chris hall, MricS country Sales

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Market knowledge and research

Our expertise in Scottish town and country property means we do far more than create a marketing campaign. When we first appraise a property, we give you suggestions on how to make your property more marketable. Based on our experience of similar properties, we can tell you what may attract or deter buyers in your target market, and how you are most likely to reach or exceed your desired financial outcome.

Rettie & Co have a respected Consultancy & Research team that conducts detailed residential research for a number of leading business clients, and uses bespoke software and exclusive databases rather than simply reporting on overall or regional trends. The team drills down to local influences and property characteristics – information that makes a real difference to our clients’ ability to secure the best price for their property.

This research and local knowledge informs the services we provide to our clients. It is a resource that few other agents in Scotland offer, and it gives sellers reassurance that they are receiving considered, professional advice.

Once instructed, our professional relationships with chartered surveyors specialising in valuations for home Reports and with experienced conveyancing solicitors can help the progress of the sale significantly. This is just one more example of how our market knowledge extends the value of the service we offer our clients.

“in a challenging market

it’s experience that counts.

we’ll help you weather

the storm and get the

results you need”

Maitland Walker residential Sales, Glasgow West end llP

how we can heLp

rettie and co have five offices across Scotland: in edinburgh, Glasgow and the Borders. each office has high footfall, a visible presence, and a strong profile locally.

But we are far from a local firm. Whilst focusing on Scottish property, we sell and let that property far beyond Scotland’s borders. Complementing our local knowledge and presence is a national and international reach. We work with sellers and purchasers, as well as landlords, other investors and tenants, all over the world.

a physical presence beyond Scotland

In addition to our network of Scottish offices, we have an associated office in London. Located in Pall Mall in central London, this outlet extends our marketing reach, bringing our sellers’ properties to the attention of a wider audience, especially in the capital and the South East. Like our offices in Scotland, The London Office enjoys high visibility, attracting both local and international visitors.

Our contacts also widen our marketing reach. In addition to our database of over 10,000 people actively looking to buy property in Scotland, we have excellent relations with major relocation agents in the Uk and beyond.

nationaL and internationaL reach – RETTIE & CO CAN MARkET yOUR PROPERTy TO BUyERS ALL OVER ThE WORLD

“Rettie & Co’s highly professional sales team carried out the sale successfully … through a combination of setting just the right price level, the optimal timing of the stages of the sales process, an application of their superior negotiating skills, and by a quiet, discreet but steely determination to

achieve the desired result”

Georg allerman, Seller of hillside house, edinburgh, based in Switzerland

nationaL and internationaL reach

We use our own website, www.rettie.co.uk, to market every property that clients sell through us. We are proud that our website is considered one of the Uk’s best property sites, and we continually invest to keep it effective. A major redesign of the site went live in Autumn 2010.

“Thank you very much for your professional handling of the sale of my mother’s house. your expertise was very much appreciated… I have had experience of selling houses before and can assure you that your professionalism, and that of your colleagues, is the best I have come across”Michael Macphail, Marchfield Grove, edinburgh

“it used to be around

the world in 80 days;

now it’s around the world

in 0.8 seconds”

alastair houlden, MricS country Sales

A number of features attract potential buyers to your property:

• Visitors to the Rettie & Co website can quickly and easily find properties in the right location and of the right type, and can instantly check key facts like the address, price and number of bedrooms without having to scroll through unsuitable properties.

• Tools like personalised directions on how to find the property ensure the site is user-friendly, and help to connect potential buyers to properties.

• A simple registration process allows users to receive daily email alerts, and to create tailored property searches and wishlists.

• We can promote your property as one of the headline ‘properties of the week’ on the website’s home page. This selection of eight properties covers the whole range of properties we sell – from country properties to flats and townhouses.

The strengths of our web marketing are evident: internet approaches to Rettie & Co now outnumber enquiries prompted by press advertising.

international web visits

americas 30%asia 18%australia/new Zealand 8%africa 3%europe (excluding UK) 41%

30%

18%3%

41%

8%

• www.globrix.com This ground-breaking Uk-wide property website uses ‘spidering’ technology to locate relevant property details from participating agents’ websites.

• www.s1homes.com Scotland’s leading property portal, with over 200,000 visitors every month.

• www.rightmove.co.uk The Uk’s number one property website featuring properties for sale and rent in the Uk and overseas. Two out of three successful home buyers who use the internet to search for property visit this site and it is now used by over 90% of all Uk estate agents.

• www.primelocation.co.uk

A popular national website for properties for sale in the Uk and overseas. It is now regarded as the ‘first stop’ for the internet promotion of property in the middle and upper market throughout the Uk.

Using the internet

Broadening our reach still further is the internet, today’s principal medium for the promotion of properties for sale. As well as our own site, we offer packages on four leading internet property websites, carefully selected by us to reach the right audiences.

All these sites allow users to register for email or text alerts about suitable properties for sale, so that details of your home can be sent to interested people all over the world.

nationaL and internationaL reach

“Thanks to Rettie & Co’s market intelligence, I was alerted to the private availability of my dream East Lothian property investment within hours of it coming to the market. Whilst I was based in Singapore, the Rettie & Co team acted on my behalf and made the off-market purchase an entirely stress free experience”lindsay cooper, Singapore

“Today’s market is global.

That’s why we invest

heavily in our online

presence to ensure we

have international reach”

Max Mills residential Sales

rettie & co have recently sold properties to buyers located in countries including:

United States Ireland

France Russia

Switzerland Dubai, U.A.E.

India hong kong

Singapore Australia

,

www.rettie.co.uk

www.ретти.co.uk

www. .co.uk

www. .co.uk

,

www.rettie.co.uk

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www. .co.uk

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,

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www.rettie.co.uk

“The Rettie & Co team really went the extra mile for us. Their flexible approach accommodated out of hours viewings and the service was always professional yet friendly”

Fred and avril leitch, Buyers, earlston

a SeLLer’S gUide – ThE WAy yOU PRESENT yOUR hOME TO PROSPECTIVE BUyERS IS IMPORTANT, WhILST hOME REPORTS ARE ALSO A ChANCE TO IMPRESS BUyERS.

Presentation is crucial if you want to maximise the sale price of your property. in a competitive market, it is an increasingly important element in securing a buyer. TV property shows have plenty of advice on presentation, but what works for one market may not work for another. This is where our advice can be invaluable. Rettie & Co’s residential and country sales teams can appraise your property, suggest how to maximise its appeal, and highlight any presentational problems. With our own in- house maintenance team and panel of approved contractors, we can even help you carry out general repairs before you put the property on the market.

“we find that, far from

being a burden on sellers in

Scotland, home reports are

helping us sell property in

current market conditions”

Geoff lockett residential Sales

© channel 4, grand designs

home reports

home Reports are a legal requirement for the vast majority of homes marketed for sale in Scotland. They should not be confused with the English home Information Packs (hIPs), which were dropped in May 2010.

A home Report is an information pack prepared by an independent chartered surveyor and paid for by the seller. It contains three parts:

• Single Survey: this must be carried out by a RICS registered chartered surveyor who is not involved in marketing the property. It details any problems with the property and how urgently they need to be addressed. It also states the property’s current market value.

• Energy Performance Certificate: this rates the property’s energy efficiency and gives practical guidance on how to improve that rating.

• Property questionnaire: this is completed by the seller and includes information such as the council tax band, utilities suppliers and parking arrangements.

home Reports may also contain a mortgage valuation report (echoing the Single Survey), although this is not a legal requirement.

The purpose of a home Report is to provide potential buyers with upfront, impartial information about the market value and condition of the property, enabling them to make an informed decision. Our experience since the introduction of home Reports in December 2008 is that their content often speeds up a sale, and that the valuation is a vital reference point in setting the appropriate asking price.

As your sales agent, Rettie & Co can arrange for an independent firm to prepare a home Report for you. Alternatively, we are happy for you to arrange this yourself if you prefer.

A home Report usually takes a few days to complete and the cost for the seller is based upon the value of the property. home Report documents should be no more than 12 weeks old when you put the property on the market.

Whilst home Reports are compulsory for most residential properties in Scotland, there are a few exceptions. We can help you determine if any of these apply to you.

how to present your home

Once we have visited your property, we can give you tailored advice. In general, the following tips work for houses and flats of all sizes:

a SeLLer’S gUide “you have more than met my expectations from beginning to end of the process. I have found you to be totally professional and reliable, friendly, extremely generous with your time”

Pat Morgan, Seller of cambridge avenue, edinburgh

“the advice of your expert agent

ahead of marketing can make

a significant influence on the

success of your sale”

James Whitsonresidential Sales

“we pride ourselves on

delivering a personal

service that helps you

every step of the way”

rob Taylor country Sales

• Make sure the property is easily identified – the name or number should be clearly visible.

• Stand in front of your property and view it with a fresh eye. Check for problems like slipped slates, growth on the gutters and downpipes, cobwebs, or flaking paint on windows, sills, doors and eaves. All these points can influence a viewer’s first impression.

• It is rarely worth spending large sums on the interior, but do make sure to undertake any minor repairs required. keeping up to date with the smaller jobs shows you have cared for the property.

• When you are expecting viewers, make sure your property is warm and well lit, as this will make people feel at home.

• If you are showing viewers around the property yourself, give them time to look properly and do not feel you need to speak all the time. This gives viewers the space to relax and imagine their own possessions in the property. People usually buy a home because it ‘feels right’, not just because it meets a particular specification.

• gather together any relevant paperwork on your property. For example, readily available guarantees for roofing work or timber treatments add to a prospective purchaser’s confidence and provide immediate reassurance to surveyors.

Should you let rather than Sell? – Rettie & Co offeR a Range of full Range of letting and management seRviCes if you PRefeR not to sell

As one of the very few chartered surveyors and estate agents in Scotland who handle both sales and letting, Rettie & Co have a broader knowledge of Scottish property than many firms. This positions us very well to advise on whether letting a property would be an appropriate alternative to selling it.

We are one of the top five letting agencies in edinburgh and we also have a growing portfolio of good quality properties in glasgow and elsewhere in scotland. We manage about 1,000 properties on behalf of our landlord clients, ranging from one or two bedroom flats to large family homes.

if you want to let your property, we are happy to visit it and discuss how to maximise its rental value. We will also discuss how to ensure compliance with current regulations, and how to make sense of the red tape that faces landlords. this appraisal is free and incurs no obligation to use our letting services.

to arrange a visit, please contact your local Rettie & Co office.

“Wherever the property,

we carefully match

tenants and properties,

so everyone’s happy”

Diarmid MacKenzie Smith, MRICS Lettings Department

“my family and i have been using Rettie & Co for many years to buy, sell and let properties, and i have always found them to be extremely professional and helpful at all times”Angus Burt, Landlord

Using chartered surveyors as your letting agent

Rettie & Co are a registered firm of chartered surveyors, regulated by the Royal institution of Chartered surveyors (RiCs). this brings many benefits for our landlord clients and their tenants:

• We have separately designated business accounts for client monies and tenant deposits.

• Business accounts are reconciled daily, and independently audited by the RiCs annually.

• We adhere to strict codes of practice under the Client money Handling Regulations.

• We abide by strict rules of professional conduct.

• We carry substantial levels

of Professional indemnity insurance cover.

• We have an approved formal complaints handling procedure.

We attain excellent rents and excellent tenants for our properties, and have a stringent referencing process for tenants. our dedicated team of over 25 letting and management staff are trained and experienced in all aspects of property rentals, from marketing to safety checks and inspections.

We provide a range of services for landlords, enabling you to choose the level of support and day-to-day management you want from us. We offer tenant introduction, rent collection, or a full management service that can cover everything from marketing to maintenance, or even project managing a refurbishment. We let both furnished and unfurnished properties.

No-obligation rental appraisal

regulated by rICS

edinburgh 1 india Streetedinburgheh3 6hatel: 0131 220 4160Fax: 0131 220 4159

Glasgow147 Bath Streetglasgowg11 5hwtel: 0141 248 4160Fax: 0141 248 2319

Melrose1 abbey StreetMelrosetd6 9pXtel: 01896 824 070Fax: 01896 824 079

londonthe London office62 pall MallLondonSw1Y 5hZtel: 020 7839 0888 Fax: 020 7839 0444

11 wemyss placeedinburgheh3 6dhtel: 0131 220 4160Fax: 0131 220 4159 115 Byres roadglasgowg11 5hwtel: 0141 341 6000Fax: 0141 341 6001

www.rettie.co.uk mail@rettie.co.uk