By Ellis Butcher

Last updated at 16:23, Friday, 03 August 2012

Cumberland Estate Agents has announced its first move into the lettings market.

The company, the estate agency arm of 160-year-old parent company the Cumberland Building Society, has recruited a number of landlords across Carlisle and is marketing houses and flats for rent in the city.

Managing director Nick Elgey said the service expansion was due to a number of reasons but driven by demand from those looking for rental properties, conditions in the housing market and a growing expectancy among customers that it offers a lettings range alongside its core house sales business.

With some banks reluctant to lend at the moment, some would-be first time buyers are struggling to get mortgages so are opting for the renting route.

The lettings market is also better able to weather economic storms with a steady turnover of singletons, divorcees, students or people relocating to Carlisle, and in the market for a new place to rent.

Mr Elgey, who has been with the company for 17 years, said: “We’ve decided to launch the service from the Carlisle branch and then offer it at our others as part of our business programme.

“Nearly all estate agents provide a lettings service so it is strategically essential.”

Mr Elgey pointed to the estate agency market where across Cumbria and further afield, house sale volumes are a reported 50 per cent below what they were at the height of the house-buying phenomenon during the middle to end of the last decade.

He added it was the “exception rather than the norm” for high street estate agents to broaden their offer to include lettings as well as sales.

Another factor is the number of buy-to-let investors now seeking to rent out purchased properties to get a healthy monthly rental return against their mortgage payments with interest rates being low, as opposed to planting a ‘For Sale’ stake in the ground during what is regarded as a buyer’s market. Mr Elgey said Cumberland Estate Agents would be hoping to compliment the lettings sector with its long-established values of good customer service and efficiency.

Judith Bulman, of The Bulman Partnership, Carlisle, which lets properties across the area in a range of price brackets, said she viewed the Cumberland’s move as indicative of the sluggish housing market.

She said: “The lettings market is very good at the moment and I can’t get properties on fast enough. Some are going first week or first day.”

Asked why lettings are proving so popular, she said: “Jobs are very transient at the moment and people do worry about buying a property then if their job moves, being able to sell it.”

Ms Bulman added: “Which normal couple wanting to get their foot on the housing ladder can get a substantial amount like a deposit together to buy a house? They haven’t a choice.”

Peter Hayward, of Hayward Tod Estate Agents and Lettings, entered the lettings market 18 months ago and said for the first time in his long career.

“People are beginning to understand that buying residential property is not the goose that lays the golden egg and are questioning whether they should be in property,” he said.

Mr Hayward said customers in the lettings market had changed. Where once it was predominantly those seeking ‘two-bed flats’, it was now seeing increasing numbers of families looking for three and four-bedroom executive properties.

He added: “We have seen people in mid-management moving to Carlisle to get a job but can’t sell their own property but are theoretically in a position to buy but are not losing out by renting. Sometimes they can rent with a reasonable monthly payment and get a better quality home than they could afford to buy.”

First published at 14:10, Friday, 03 August 2012
Published by http://www.cumberlandnews.co.uk