Rosie Wills on Residential Surveying and Rethinking Estate Agent Relationships

Speaker: 00:08
Hello and welcome. You’re listening to This Is Surveying, the podcast shining a light on the people, ideas, and stories shaping this incredible profession. I’m Nina Young, founder of Surveyors UK and the Surveying Room, the community bringing surveyors together, breaking down silos, and making surveying visible. So for now, let’s dive into our latest episode. Hello everybody, and welcome to This Is Surveying. I’m your host, Nina Young, and I’m pleased to welcome today’s guest, which is Rosie Wills. Rosie Wills is a building surveyor based in the South, I believe, Rosie. Yeah, in the southwest. Lovely. Welcome though. Welcome, Rosie. I’m pleased to have you on the show today.

Speaker 1: 01:01
Thank you. Thanks for the invite.

Speaker: 01:03
What I’d like to do is if we start with just you talking a little bit about your background, I guess. Sort of how you’ve got to today, and because I know we’ve had some prior discussions to the podcast around your background in housing and then the move to residential and things like that. If you could just sort of give a a little bit about who you are, really.

Speaker 1: 01:23
Yeah, yeah. So I’m gonna I’m gonna do it slightly different to what I’d normally do it. So I am uh I’m a charter construction manager and ASOC RICs member. And I’m working in private practice now, but for 10 years up until May this year, a little bit more than 10 years, I’ve been working in social housing, various roles. Um I’ve done I did a podcast a little while ago with Simon Jones, an air quality matter that just kind of explains. So I’m not going to repeat too much, but I ended up developing a specialism in damp and mould. So that’s a lot of what I’ve talked about up until now. Yes. It’s definitely my specialist subject. Do like talking about it. But what I thought I’d kind of do just because I think it would be useful because of my transition into private practice is kind of how that ended up happening. So the reason why I ended up going through the charter construction manager route, it was when I was still working in social housing. I ended up doing everything a little bit backwards, so kind of learning how to do stuff, and it was quite a vocational uh process of understanding building pathology and damp and mould and everything like that, and realized that I was doing things like attending court, and you have to write down what your your your background is and what your level of expertise and qualification is, and up until that point, it was a few A levels and a management qualification, which wasn’t really that applicable, and I really didn’t want to do housing management qualification, so I ended up thinking I I want to do something, I want to get some credibility. So I did the Chartered Institute of Builders Buildings qualification to become and their chartered membership programme. And that was it was really, really good, but it was really challenging. And at the beginning I thought, do you know what? Other people do this, I can do it. And then started and then instantly thought, oh my god, I can’t do this. I don’t know any of this stuff. And the the very first, I think even before the first session, we got given all this paperwork and it was planned for a some sort of building that we would be working on. And I was looking at the diagram, thinking, I don’t even know what any of these things were. It was a little circle with a dot in the middle. And I was like, if I don’t know this, I’m not gonna know anything. And then the first meeting they said, that’s a tree. I was like, I know what a tree is, like I get this, I’m probably gonna be okay. And then went through this up and down of being confident, okay, yeah, I do get this, and realised the benefit of being in responsive repairs and ongoing maintenance of older buildings and the value that that can bring to understanding construction. So then got really confident, then the usual confidence and knocks throughout the process, and then ended up being a charter construction manager, and then that allowed me to become ASOC RICS. But it was just in with the intention of upskilling, becoming more professional, and I didn’t realise that that would actually allow me to become a residential surveyor later down the line. It was that was never my intention. But when it got to the point where I didn’t want to work in social housing anymore, I had an opportunity to move across to Nova Surveyors, which is what I’ve done now. And I primarily do home buyer surveys, a little bit of dump and mould, specific defect surveys, but I carry on delivering training and coaching to social housing professionals on the side cycle.

Speaker: 04:38
Yeah, because you do do training as well, don’t you? There’s there’s quite a lot of training you’ve done in the past and continue to do, is that correct?

Speaker 1: 04:45
Yeah, yeah. So I’d kind of spend the when I the reason why I delayed moving across to private sector was because I really didn’t want to give up the variety of what I did in social housing. But then I realised actually when I started in social housing, it was a very linear role and I made it my own. So then I had a conversation with my now boss to say, listen, can I, if I came across, would you let me if I worked really hard and I do my bare minimum of what I need to do, would you let me have a day or two a week to work on pet projects and social value projects? And he was more than happy with that. So that’s allowed me to build my own role where I am. And part of that is I don’t want to lose any of the knowledge that I built up in social housing before and just leave that career, but to carry on uh delivering it in a different way. So that’s uh been really good.

Speaker: 05:31
What are the differences between then that you’ve seen moving from housing to sort of residential?

Speaker 1: 05:38
Well, it’s less stressful for one. I think every job or every career that I’ve had has gradually got less stressful, and I think that’s the personal choice that my my motivation now is to be I’ve loved every job that I’ve done, genuinely I’ve loved it. But I just really want to be happy in work and home life. Um and I’ve got a really nice balance now of I love every single Monday, and I did before, but I love every single Monday, but Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and weekends. So definitely a little bit less stress, but it kind of puts it all into perspective. So I appreciate the benefits that I’ve got now. But in turn, in terms of professionally, one of the biggest differences that I found is the uh the networking and the the willingness to share information across professionals. That was one of the big things that I’ve discovered, probably a little bit too late in my career in social housing, was how important it is to network with other professionals. When I started doing that, my development was exponential. And it just saved me reinventing the wheel in lots of ways. And then now I’ve moved across into a completely different sector where there’s it’s is commercial, so there’s going to be a level where people are less likely to share information.

Speaker: 06:53
But having seen So it’s more, it’s more guarded, it’s more guarded so people because they’re competing with each other locally. Is that the kind of thing you mean?

Speaker 1: 07:01
Yeah. So in social housing, I could speak to people who worked in exactly the same areas and maybe owned properties in the same streets as we did, but there wasn’t any commercial interest either way, because people move into homes where they have the opportunity to move into social housing. So we could talk about our successes and we could just give someone a whole policy or a whole procedure and say, This is what we’re doing and it’s working really well, and it wouldn’t disadvantage us or our residents in any way. And equally we could say we did this and it went terribly wrong, don’t do it. And they would do it to us and they’d say we did we invested loads of money in this project and it didn’t work out, so don’t bother. And again, there was no risk to us talking about where we had got things wrong. Whereas in I guess any commercial or private sector, there’s a I think there’s a worry that if you tell someone what’s gone really well, that someone might steal it and take it into their business and then take business away from you, or just anything about people worrying about their reputation. So it’s better to keep it guarded and secret rather than share information. And we’re probably all trying to figure out the same things in our own little areas.

Speaker: 08:10
Absolutely, you definitely are. Yeah, because so many residential surveyors, and it is it’s always the same thing, same challenges, same concerns, complaints, PI, getting your business, getting clients, visibility. It is always the same thing. And so, so how have you kind of dealt with it? Is there anything you’re doing at the moment? Do you do sort of any local networking, or what kind of things have you been doing sort of in that space?

Speaker 1: 08:38
Oh, so it’s really, really early days at the moment because I I’ve been trying to find my feet in terms of actually figuring out what my job is and how to do it well. Yeah. And that’s still obviously in progress. What I’ve just to kind of toe in the water, what I have done is is I reached out to a local surveyor, but someone who’s quite junior, like me. And it was someone that I’d just happen to, I had an introduction. So and uh when you meet someone and you think this is someone who doesn’t have a lot of ego, just someone who seemed like a bit of a safe bet, and just reached out and said, Listen, it seems like we’re in a similar position. How do you feel about just doing a peer review of each other’s surveys? Because I’m doing this, I’m basing what I’m doing on my employer, my mentor, who’s done it for years, and I’m pretty confident in how it’s done. And it’s if I received a copy of this report, I think I’d be happy. But would you just look over it and tell me, is it actually a good report? Because I’ve got no idea really what a level two survey should look like, what’s a good one, what’s a bad one. And then we did a little bit of a swap. So we each took three of our surveys of various kind of types of properties and then just shared and did a swap and said, Well, this is great, I really like that. I’m gonna take that into what I’m doing. But this one, I think you’re kind of opening up a bit of a risk for yourself there, or this isn’t great, or the for example, one of the bits of feedback which is great is it says your report says appears to 156 times. It either is or is or isn’t. So, and it was really good feedback. So, actually, sometimes it is a peers because it’s only a spot inspection. But if it’s a plastic tank in the loft, it doesn’t appear to be a plastic tank, it is a plastic tank. So just take out the peers. And it’s stuff that when you’re looking through it in isolation, you can’t see it yourself. But that peer review just helped to pick up really small things like that that make a big difference.

Speaker: 10:27
It’s priceless, that kind of feedback, isn’t it?

Speaker 1: 10:30
Yeah, absolutely. So that was really, really helpful. And then I think we’re just planning on doing that, you know, repeating it again maybe in six months or so, and then potentially just making it a little bit wider, maybe finding a few other trusted surveyors and hopefully doing something similar on a bigger scale with either that organization or another similar local surveying firm to then look at other information that we’ve got other data and and compare and contrast.

Speaker: 10:55
And I think it’s a great idea. I think I think I I know this does go on, but it is very much micro and most people don’t even talk like most most surveyors wouldn’t even want to admit that they’re getting their report reviewed. Never mind if someone else looking at it, never mind getting feedback and potential criticism or well, and and positives and negatives. So I think it does take, I think there was the commercial angle, and I think it does take confidence. I think it was you’re opening yourself, yeah. You’re opening yourself. Oh, you’ve got to be brave, haven’t you? Like, tell me what’s wrong. It’s it’s not easy for anyone to do that kind of thing, but I think it’s it’s great that you’re doing that because it’s like scene, you mentioned ego as well. Is that something that you think plays quite a part in the whole the the lack of sort of almost sharing, collaborating? Do you think that plays a part?

Speaker 1: 11:47
Is it yeah, I think so sometimes. I think some people I think it’s easy to believe that you’re right and to believe that you’re really good. Um, but it’s easy to carry on with that belief if you’re not willing to ever put it to the test. Um, I think the the only way to carry on developing is to be willing to be wrong and to be real willing to maybe have a bad survey. But the only way that you’d ever know is to get someone to look at it and tell you so. So I think if you’re if you’re and I guess that’s the thing, if you’re not willing to have someone look over it, you’re probably not proud enough of what you’re delivering.

Speaker: 12:20
Um that’s true. And I I think more and more, because I’ve I’ve spoken to surveyors about this the peer review thing and being another pair of eyes, because obviously you’ve got to do reflection, you’ve got to reflect and try and review your own work. But as you say, if you’ve used to doing something a certain way for say 20 years, for example, there is that whole presumption I’m right, but how do you know? Because if that’s how are clients reading that report, have you adapted and changed for the way people have changed and how to interpret things?

Speaker 1: 12:52
Definitely, and and and things do change a lot, and I think that there’s it’s this is the this isn’t a generalization because not everyone’s like it, but there are certain fields, and I think surveying might be one of it, where there’s there’s sometimes a bit of an element of people wanting to be right and wanting to be seen to be right, and you see you do see it on LinkedIn a little bit where people are desperate to correct other people. Um and even if it’s right overall, it’s just to pick up any tiny perceived error, um, or just you know, make the point about I know this and this is my level of expertise and you’re wrong. And sometimes it’s just completely unnecessary. And it does put people’s backs up a bit and makes people a bit nervous about saying something because you think, oh, I want to share this. But what if and I I do it every time. I part of the being transparent and helping other people that are coming through, maybe just behind me, to sit because I see it from other people when people share like the likes of Russell Rafton and really great videos that say this is my survey, this is what I’ve done, this is what I found, that can be really helpful. But there’s always going to be one person to go, well, I would have done it differently. And every time I post something, I think, oh God, what is someone gonna look at this and absolutely slate me? But I just think I’ll just do it, and if I if I’ve got something wrong, so be it, I’ll learn from it.

Speaker: 14:09
You’re brave, Rosie, because this is the thing, like the majority of surveyors I know and speak to do not post on LinkedIn at all because of the fear of reproach, because of the fear of criticism, because there is a lot of that, sadly, and usually the ones that want to be right are usually the ones that are most present and likely to post, like to come in. Um, and sadly, there are so many amazing professionals out there that I just wish would post and share some of their knowledge and insights, but they won’t. They won’t because it’s public platform and there’s certain characters, and but I think it’s great that because I have seen a lot of your posts, which I think are great, and I hope I’ve also seen comments, and I’m like, yeah, here we go. Um it’s just always the same, isn’t it? It’s it’s like, yeah, there is always that, and I think, but I think just just people like yourself and others that are more and more doing that and just dealing with it and you deal with it in a really professional way. This isn’t about everyone has opinions, and I think opinions, there’s nothing wrong with opinions, but I think it’s also in in how you deliver them.

Speaker 1: 15:14
And I think yeah, I think sometimes just people and maybe not being able to see the bigger picture, and it it came up at a recent webinar that it was general general rules or general principles for diagnostics of damp, and the the what was in the webinar was that not in the context of social housing, which is typically post-war properties, rising damp’s relatively rare. And if you see something that looks like rising damp 95 90% of the time, it’s probably not going to be, and you should look at condensation and penetrating dampness, raise ground levels, things like that. But the whole of the comments was just non-stop. It rising damp does exist, rising damp is really common. You think, yeah, in the greater, the the wider environment, yeah. But if you’re looking at post-war properties, probably not, but it’s just people love talking about rising damp, but people love the argument, which is I normally steer away from it in any way, shape, or form. But it just happened to come up, and you just think, yeah, it’s just you’re missing the point that this is in the context of social housing and the the important messages a boy died and we need to do something about it. But someone wanted to be right.

Speaker: 16:19
Do you think there’s have you noticed yet? I mean, you might not smudge in obviously the residential space because you’re kind of relatively new in that area, but have you noticed any changes in saveing, like changes with attitudes or changes with younger generations coming in? Just curious as to you’ve observed anything.

Speaker 1: 16:38
Yeah, I think I probably am a little bit too new into it to really know what’s changed or what it was like before. I think the main thing that I’ve observed is there’s there seems to be conflict between people who do residential surveying and people who do general building and defect surveying. And it seems to be the conflict seems to be around a lack of understanding about the RICS home survey standard and what the actual purpose and scope of any RICS product is. It’s that that you know I see you see it, the arguments between people, but you just think if you really wanted to have an argument, I think you should probably read the standard first and understand what the point of a home buyer survey is. Decide whether there’s an argument here.

Speaker: 17:23
I think I know what you’re referring to though, because I think I’ve seen that where there is, and I wrote I think I wrote an article about it, it was literally the there’s this the finger pointing, especially between, for example, the independent damp and build damp surveyors, timber surveyors, and RICS surveyors. Like you say, the scope of a level two survey is not the same as someone going in and investigating and and doing an intrusive survey of a particular damp problem.

Speaker 1: 17:52
Yeah.

Speaker: 17:53
So different.

Speaker 1: 17:54
Yeah.

Speaker: 17:55
And I think there is a lot of that. Well, why did and it’s interesting because I’m interested to get your thoughts, but I’ve noticed at the end of the day, a lot of level two surveys and surveyors they will refer to you need to have an independent damp survey done. So there is a passing of work across to these independent damp surveys. And yet there is also the complaints from the damp surveyors that why didn’t they do X, Y, and Z? Why didn’t they do this? Well, that’s not actually in the scope. And it’s I’ve always find that interesting, is that actually, on one hand, they complain about the surveys and that they haven’t gone in depth enough, and why am I getting this? But it’s actually it passes on work, and it’s it’s and then you put it the other way. And yeah, so I think it’s interesting that you’ve picked up on that because I think that is a real big issue, is that they don’t understand many don’t understand the scope of how far you go with a level two, and then obviously a level three, and you’re not lifting up floorboards.

Speaker 1: 18:57
Yeah, yeah, and I think it’s it’s the the conflict comes from some areas of poor practice, but then it’s just a blanket application of this must be terrible. And I think that there definitely is in any level of survey some poor practice where someone will take a damp meter reading and say it needs further investigation, but at level two or three, there should still be an element of following the trail and identifying possible causes so that people can make informed decisions, but there will always be something in there to say, This is what I’ve seen, here’s I’ve followed the trail, here’s your most likely causes that definitely need to be resolved. But you may need to have a specialist. Yeah, the same with drainage, the same with anything else where you can’t see everything, it’s a spot infection. So I think there’s sometimes poor practice, but then it’s just become a blanket approach to say it’s terrible that any RIC surveyor would ever ever refer to an independent damp surveyor. You shouldn’t have to do it there and then, but it is outside of the scope.

Speaker: 19:58
Yeah, I think it’s also because a lot of surveyors operate at different levels. Like I’ve seen so many different the scope of a level two, despite it being a level two RSCS survey, some will go much further and some will charge more for that, which is fine. And I think that’s it. So not everybody does apply as a guide, not everybody apply and do the some will do more, some will check all the wonders, even on a level two. And it so you know, and that I think that doesn’t help because obviously, and I see the the new students coming through, and you’re like, it’s very difficult to know because they could shadow one survey and they’ll do it one way, and another do it in another way.

Speaker 1: 20:37
Yeah, yeah, and I think that’s where we are. And the person who I did the peer reviewing, I think they’re really similar, which is what we’re doing, what we’re delivering, is what we’re comfortable delivering, which is kind of a level two and a half. And it’s everything that’s within the scope of a level two, but probably going a little bit above and beyond and giving more information because I think, well, why not? And you you’ve got to be that’s an organizational and it’s a it’s an attitude sort of thing, which is we want to deliver good service, and if you know it, you should put it in there, and we’re willing to take the risk. With that, there is always an extra liability if you’re giving more information than what you need to give. There is an increased risk of claims, but organisationally we’re all on the same thought process, which is we’re happy to take that risk, and we will all take that risk because we want to be consistent, and that’s the level of survey that we offer, and we we charge slightly more than average because it is a level two and a half, but we don’t want to deliver just a level two. We want to be we want something that we’re happy with. What would I want to receive if I’ve commissioned that level of survey? And I’m pretty comfortable with it. Other people aren’t, other people would want to charge level two prices and do an exact, then that’s fine if you stick to the scope. But everyone, whatever you’re doing, it’s got to be consistent.

Speaker: 21:54
That’s it, I guess. It’s the consistency, not so much how much you do, it’s being consistent every time and providing that standard of service that people expect the client expects and the price that you charge reflects that. Yes, you’re right, everyone does charge different rates. One of the things that we mentioned before we we started the podcast was you you mentioned something which I thought was brilliant was to do with the state agents the CPT.

Speaker 1: 22:18
Yeah so this is coming into an organization completely fresh eyes and I think this this normally only lasts for the first few months that you’re somewhere and then your workload builds up and you don’t have time for all the nice stuff. But we what I’d found is we’d had a few conversations with conversations with agents in my kind of early months and we had just as as an example I spoke to a few agents who’d contacted to say you know the survey’s been done but the the buyers pulled out um which the vendor just wanted to double check is there anything really dangerous that they need to resolve straight away. And then we had a few other issues where it was properties that were in really really good condition and it I tend I’ve seen this more and more now is the the better the property condition is the more likely it is to fall through after a survey and the agents were saying the same was that it’s the expectations are either really high. So any minor issue that would have been completely predictable anyway or that it’s people that use this the survey as an excuse to pull out even though there’s nothing really risky in the survey. Interesting okay and we had another agent who we don’t work with a lot who’d said are you in you know do you want more referrals? We’ve been using a different local surveyor but they keep flagging issues with the cavity wall ties and making recommendations um and I’d said if it’s a property that’s older than this it’s a really valid claim. So it’s not it’s a really valid risk to flag so absolutely send business our way but we’re not going to do any different than that surveyor because they were doing the right thing. I didn’t get any more business from them obviously but what I thought was rather than just have these isolated conversations and risk the damaging relationship with agents because of them not knowing what goes on inside a survey and what what actually happens what we decided to put together and I was really nervous about doing this because I’ve done lots of training and things like that but it was a completely different environment I’d contacted a few of our local agents and said look we’re offering free CPD sessions like a breakfast or a lunch session and it was keeping your sales on track so in in relation to the survey so it was just a really quick session half an hour with a kind of QA sort of thing to say this is this is the proportion of people that actually commission home buyer surveys. These are the reasons why sales fall down and some of them are related to the survey so it’s kind of within our control. This is the background these are the risks and kind of used the heart versus large as a an idea of what happens if we don’t report effectively and then just went through and said these are the kind of things that we pick up this is what we look at and this is what you can advise your vendors before they even list the property. So we’re going to look at set we’re going to look at drains and if someone has got a massive plant pot over the top of a drain or they built a shed over a drain we have to report to say we haven’t been able to inspect it. So then making sure that the drains are accessible is really important because we’re not going to have that. Here’s an example of the cracks that we see and these ones aren’t of concern. So if your vendors are concerned about cracks they don’t need to be worried about this we’d only we’d only be concerned if it was this much. So again if your buyers start to talk about this doesn’t matter it does worry people sometimes so your vendors could actually redecorate just before they set they sell it so that people aren’t worried and damp and mould if you’ve got an empty property if it’s in probate if you can put heating on at 16 degrees yeah because it’s going to feel warm it’s not going to smell damp because we’re going to say there’s a musty odor in there’s no signs of dampness or there’s slightly elevated readings everywhere because it’s empty we will put it into proportion but some people are going to be scared off so your buyer your your vendors can just do these. So and then off the back of those conversations which was really really good they’re really good sessions and we ended up running a few more we then developed a leaflet that we then gave to the agents to give to vendors how to get your property app sale and survey ready and it’s just a checklist of check these things make sure your gutters are clear make sure your drains are clear make sure you have your heating on to this level make sure you know just a list of basic things that kind of and it helped I think with that relationship with agents that they understood why we were doing what we were doing. They understood that our surveys aren’t just full of further investigations, that some of it was preventable and then kind of on top of that we’ve had a couple that have just happened by accident where the agents they come on a survey with us and we’ve just talked them through this is what we’re doing when we when I look into roof space. Yeah. So I think we just carry on doing little bits like that. So either refresher for people who’ve been doing it for a while or just kind of ongoing CPD for new starters.

Speaker: 26:51
But it’s been really how has it been received is it been really well received as it as light bulb moments happen for these agents like oh okay because there is so much misconceptions and you know what why why is it why are electrics always red to kind of comment like you yeah that kind of thing. How has it how has it helped?

Speaker 1: 27:09
Yeah I think it was it it’s been really helpful. We’ve had some really good feedback and I think we’re going to try and roll it out a little bit wider because again it’s not it doesn’t really change the the amount of work that we get coming through agents. It’s not for that it’s just improving the relationships that we’ve got already and we kind of want to you know if we’ve got local agents that we work with and they have other branches outside of our area that we’re never going to deal with that we’d still say we’d still do it across everyone because then they understand having gone off on a bit of a side track I did watch that panorama on agents a little while ago and it’s really nice that the agents that we work with I don’t see that at all I don’t see that misconduct and it’s I think because they’re smaller, they’re local firms kind of like us. So it really makes sense to carry on that good practice because like us they’ve kind of generally got the the right intentions and it’s just everyone works together as a kind of in partnership I suppose but maintaining independence.

Speaker: 28:09
It is it’s collaborating and and helping the whole process along because as soon as you get rid of misconceptions, misunderstandings, it can run a lot smoother.

Speaker 1: 28:19
One of the other things that we did as well and it was it was kind of off the back of that and it just happened that it coincided with the home buying and selling reform. Like we started doing this about a month before that consultation opened which was every now and then you get properties that they’re difficult to sell for a number of reasons and we thought well it’s not going to be that popular but we’ll offer it is a kind of a bespoke survey that is for pre-sale. So it’s a vendor survey so they can organise a survey of their own property and it’s kind of tailored for people that really need a quick sale people who have high value properties that are these kind of well-maintained high value that tend to fall through because of fickle buyers I think and then just slightly complicated properties that you have the survey done beforehand so that either they can use it to get the essential repairs done so that it’s not going to fall through at the last minute or they can make sure that the property’s valued appropriately and they can offer that survey to their buyer. So we’ve had one done already with an independent surveyor and then that buyer can buy the survey for I think 75 pounds and then it gets transferred into their name so they have the kind of the insurance backed bit of it. And we’ve done that a few times where it just means that the sellers are ready and prepared and again it’s off the back of the agent’s feedback to say we’ve got a few properties that we’re struggling with. Is there any way that we could do something and it’s just putting something in place that is not something we offer a lot but just having it there just gives that little bit more flexibility.

Speaker: 29:55
Yeah and also for how things are going to pan out.

Speaker 1: 29:57
I mean we don’t know yet it’s all a bit of an unknown but it it goes to show that even if it doesn’t come out as a widespread thing there’s probably a need for vendor surveys and for people that just want it to go really smoothly just think just have it there and then maybe the buyer’s less likely to want to commission their own survey because there’s already something there. Or it might be a top-up survey I guess.

Speaker: 30:20
There’s some really good things coming out of our conversation Rosie I think people are going to find your the things that you’re doing very uh very helpful and I can imagine that some people some listeners are going to go I might try that myself.

unknown: 30:33
Yeah.

Speaker: 30:34
You know building those relationships with estate agents is is really good.

Speaker 1: 30:39
Yeah yeah and I think that’s the thing we’re kind of we’ve you’ve got to be principled and you’ve got to be really independent so you think you can’t there’s not a lot that we can offer to agents when you’re like that because you can’t change anything that you do in terms of what you’re reporting on. So we just had to think outside the box with it and think how do we actually keep everyone on the same page without bowing to the pressure of saying okay we’re annoying the agents because every now and then sales fall through maybe we should not word it like that but then we’re doing our clients a disadvantage for by not reporting properly.

Speaker: 31:12
One thing I’m I’m curious and I like to I like to ask people is what is it you enjoy about what you do?

Speaker 1: 31:19
Do you know what I’m easily pleased. I’ve been I’ve enjoyed every single job that I’ve done even if it’s a really technically boring job. Right. I I think I’ve always liked report writing I’ve always liked in one form or another looking at some sort of data or evidence or something and then interpreting it one way or another and then putting into report so that other people understand whether that’s any sort of investigation. So I used to do quite a lot of disciplinary investigations in my old old job and damp and mold investigations obviously data analysis so looking at data of our our whole housing stock and then translating it into something that makes sense to residents or to boards or whatever else and it’s that same sort of thing is built in massively to home buyer surveys but generally it’s just the variety I think working in my local area is quite nice you get to see loads of different houses and loads of different people and I kind of love finding out story. I always ask the the buyers where they’re coming from what they’re what’s what kind of change it is for them and when people are when I’m if the vendors are on site asking them those questions about where are you going because it’s it’s fascinating being part of that quite a big part of someone’s life and just having those conversations I think is really fun. But yeah so I think that’s what drives me and then it it’s just the fact that it I found it quite nice in terms of work life balance that we’re not we’re not under pressure to do a massive amount of surveys in a week so it’s been quite nice to have the time to do things properly and then also trying to get a little bit of time to park up somewhere nice with a nice view and get a little bit more north Devon that I haven’t seen before.

Speaker: 33:02
Oh lovely lovely been to Devon once many a long long time ago I’d love to go again long time ago.

Speaker 1: 33:09
Okay so before we sort of wrap up our session is there anything else you want to share particularly yeah so again it in terms of practicing what I preach and trying to encourage people to talk more about sharing what you do and I I understand why some people don’t do it and it is scary the idea that if you’ve done something you’ve seen s seen the success that anyone could come into your patch and start doing the same and then better but if I just share some of the things that we’ve introduced that have been really helpful. So yeah great and part of this is coming in just being a different person. So the where I work that’s it’s it’s quite a small organisation. So when I when I started there were only three people in the entire organisation one surveyor and you do things in a certain way because I think you do you do customer service in a way that you would want to have it as a customer but generally generationally this changes. So for example on our website when I started the process to get a quote for and book an inspection is you would do an online inquiry form which is on quite a good system and then it would go through to someone else and then they would look at it and give you a quote and then that would come out afterwards or you’d phone up and ask questions. And I thought that’s how lots of people like to do it of an older generation. Whereas once you start going younger and younger people like that a lot less. So I’m definitely of a generation where I don’t really want to be making a phone call and I also want instant information and even if I go into a shop and there’s no price tags on something my automatic assumption is it’s too expensive for me. Yeah totally yeah and when I go online I can’t see transparent pricing I just think I don’t want to have I don’t want to have an awkward conversation by phone and I also I want to shop around and I don’t want to have to wait however long for this person to get back to me with a quote and then that person I just want to go on and go this is roughly that much this company is roughly that much and then also what is in a survey so one of the things that we changed which has been really successful is number one changing the website so it’s got loads of information about what’s in a different level survey. So there’s kind of a blog page and that’s linked to from the service survey page that says here’s the different levels, here’s what you need to know about it.

Speaker: 35:22
So it’s clear it’s clear when they land what you’re getting.

Speaker 1: 35:25
Really clear and then a link to the the RICS home survey standard for anyone who wants to look more into that. And then the pricing is much more transparent now. So it says if you want this survey this is the price range. If you want this survey this is the price range and then also one of the key questions that we had is how soon can you do it? Because even if it’s within budget if we can’t do it soon enough that’s a wasted time for a customer. So we’ve got a code now built into the website that we update as often as needed but it says if you book today you would have the report in your hand on this date. And it’s just code that’s embedded into it that says plus 10 working days or plus 12 working days from today. And if we’re on holiday we just increase it so that it reflects that. So then they have that information straight at the beginning at the beginning. And then we had some quite a few clients I’d noticed that were phoning up, getting a quote for level two or three, being recommended by the agents because we have that good level of um that good relationship with agents and they trust us. But then they were saying it’s a bit too expensive or customers were saying it’s a bit too expensive. But really it’s outside of their budget. So rather than just the conversations we were having was that’s our price we can’t reduce it because we can’t deliver the quality that we want to deliver for any less than what we’re charging. We just thought let’s just step back and I had a conversation with a customer who was in that position and he I was I was in his house he was selling it and he said well now that I we weren’t going to get a survey done because my dad’s a builder but you’re here I’m starting to doubt should I have a survey done and my sales approach is generally the opposite of sales which is tell everyone all the reasons why they don’t need to buy a survey from us um so I said you don’t really if you go onto a website there’s a whole there’s a load of blogs that tells you what we look for so just look for those things he was concerned about there’s a damp patch on the ceiling I said we’ll go into the roof above just have a look underneath the loft insulation if it’s wet above there then look above there and if there’s a roof leak. But then I said well tell you what like if if you were going to get a survey what would you actually want? Would you be if we were to offer something at a lower price that only looked at the key issues that a normal like the average person wouldn’t know. He was like yeah that would suit so I said well we’re gonna set something up if you want to trial it send me an email. So we set up the Nova Core survey which is kind of like a level two except it doesn’t go into so much detail about internal doors because people know what an internal door looks like. It doesn’t really matter it doesn’t go into loads of details about kitchens and bathrooms it just says there is a bathroom and there’s no sign of a leak. And each of those little elements that we strip back saves us five or ten minutes on site and it meant that we could offer it at a much more competitive price. Okay. And that’s been really successful. So we now do probably as many core surveys as we do level twos. But rather than just having that same constant discussion about we can’t reduce the price we said what what do people want what do people want and how can we deliver it at a price that suits them so that’s been been really successful and it’s just that we’ve constantly just tried to look at things like that and understand things from a customer’s perspective and try and change it to suit them rather than just saying this is what we do, this is how we’ve always done it. Yeah and that change has been helpful.

Speaker: 38:34
That’s a good approach because you’re because I don’t think enough people do that. They don’t put themselves in the position of the client I think it’s too much we’re we’re just doing this this is what we do.

Speaker 1: 38:43
Yeah.

Speaker: 38:44
But being rigid like that and not adapting to change and like you say people a lot of people young generations they they just want to be able to use WhatsApp. They they just want to be able to message about a survey don’t they? They don’t even want to certainly don’t want to speak to somebody. No and it’s everything like being now everything being instant information makes like how they land on your website they need to make that decision so fast. Yeah if they have to spend too much time they’ll just go somewhere else.

Speaker 1: 39:09
Yeah and that’s the thing and it we we’ll hopefully be able to start looking at our data over the longer term and I think there’s enough old data that you could actually we could start to figure out whether we’re actually getting better kind of conversion rates using this method.

Speaker: 39:24
So you’re looking at your data as well to then help make sort of decisions on the business, the service and how you how you structured and things like that.

Speaker 1: 39:33
Yeah definitely and I never thought I’d say this because that was the biggest relief from moving across from any sort of corporate world was not having to have meetings about meetings and meetings that should have been emails and 10 spreadsheets that you have to do every month and different KPIs. I was so glad to leave that behind but I have kind of got to point now to think oh it would be nice to maybe have like a monthly team meeting and just have just this week drafted a our first kind of KPI sheet that just looks at our key metrics so that we can start to understand what’s going on and some of it will be that kind of conversion rate how many how many quotes are we doing and how many are actually turning into surveys and then also the key metric I think is complaints and claims as the business is growing and we’ve got more surveyors coming in and we’re delivering more surveys it’s inevitable that we may have more claims but I really want to understand it into in context of how many so that’s part of putting all these metrics together is it will eventually be how many claims are you receiving per hundred surveys or if that’s not that that might be a little bit skewed because it’s not that many if it is per thousand surveys or whatever it is so that then you can compare it year on year and if the whole networking works out that you can anonymise that data and chat with other surveyors and go well how many are you getting per hundred surveys and what are your lessons learnt in terms of this is the kind of yeah and it’s just I love lessons learned and it’s so important within your organisation but if you can learn from other people’s mistakes then or even not mistakes just their experiences then again you’re going to be benefiting everyone and I think in terms of this whole when we’re talking about nationally and what we’re doing the reason why I think it’s really important is because what we do and the quality of service that we provide does have an impact on other surveyors elsewhere in the country because our customers aren’t staying where they get they’re moving. That’s the whole point. So if I deliver a bad service here that customer might move to Birmingham and might not commission a survey in Birmingham because they think that surveyors aren’t worth it or vice versa if I deliver a good service that person’s more likely to then commission a survey somewhere else in the country and you say I follow some of the forums and just kind of figure out what are people saying about this and it is very very mixed but I think the better we are as a sector and as a a profession the more likely we are all to be sustainable in business because we want Rick surveys to be credible.

Speaker: 42:07
Yes absolutely you’re spot on there because and it’s also people just know every people have family friends everywhere so if someone has a bad survey in the South and the chapter of friend oh it was awful wasn’t worth it and that person could live anywhere yeah in Scotland well any anywhere. Well not Scotland obviously but in England and they’re like oh well they got one I won’t bother and it just spreads like that and then social media as you it spreads because I I did some analysis recently on on Reddit I did some whole research deep research on Reddit in some of the forums there and what are people talking about yeah with surveys and where the misconception and that was extremely interesting to look at people’s perceptions and there was all that oh too many caveats it wasn’t worth it or they didn’t do this they didn’t do that and it’s I think like you say working together even though surveyors don’t necessarily want to share certain things the fact is that it’s doing the whole profession an injustice because if there’s no consistency and everything you’re doing is going to have this knock on effect in future generations.

Speaker 1: 43:08
Yeah yeah and that’s the thing like worst case scenario if if commercially you’re not you don’t feel it’s appropriate to speak to someone really close to you then just find someone in a neighbouring county and start that networking with them just somewhere where you feel safe that it’s not going to impact on your business. But I I do think it’s important to do it. And it I I feel okay with it but people always say that surveying can be quite lonely. So if it’s just for that just having someone to chat to about stuff I think is really important so you don’t get lost in it.

Speaker: 43:37
I think it’s so true. It’s what one of the motivations behind the surveying room the community because I’ve always had people say a message and say it’s so many people have said it’s lonely and it’s nice I can just dip in here and you know tr talk to someone if I want to or because it is can be isolating s because we have so many SMEs and soul businesses across the UK, don’t we?

Speaker 1: 43:57
Lots of independence. Exactly. I think I’ve been lucky Starting where I have because we’ve got a trainee who’s actually she’s just um qualified. Um but I’ve been able to have someone come around with me on quite a few surveys, so at least once a week I’ve got someone with me for a bit company. So that’s been a lot of fun.

Speaker: 44:13
Yeah, that’s great. Yeah, I can imagine. If anybody wants to get in touch with you, or is anything you want to share, is is there anywhere in particular or something because we can include and it’s entirely up to you, but we can include links on the show notes and when we obviously share the episode out. Is there anyone in particular you’d like to send people do?

Speaker 1: 44:33
Yeah, I would say most of my contacts externally is via LinkedIn. Okay. But all the things I’ve talked about. If anyone is thinking I do want to start the process of reviewing what we’re doing in a similar way, take a look at the website because obviously it’s out there. Nova surveyors.

Speaker: 44:50
Nova surveyors. That all the things that you have mentioned today are just it’s so good, and I think it’s so much more of what we need. That whole collaboration piece between the profession, between all the professional sorts of state agents, that networking and learning from each other, because all of this collaboration will only just improve surveys, the quality, the service, and then the public’s perception of them.

Speaker 1: 45:16
Yeah, I think so. And I think that a lot of people feel that anxiety, don’t they? Is it’s one of those jobs where there’s a lot of there’s a lot of professional pressure to get things right and worrying about have I got this wrong and am I is there a claim coming somewhere d down the line? Anxiety.

Speaker: 45:30
And it’s also that like you say, because uh uh complaints and things are are extremely stressful and it’s hard to deal with it, and that can be very difficult because your way of perception of dealing with it, because when I’ve when I’ve been to some events and one of the most popular sort of discussion topics or panels or everything is are always around complaints handling, yeah. It’s a very difficult thing, and I think it’s you know, some surveyors have said that it’s terrifying for them, that you know, really stressful, they can’t sleep.

Speaker 1: 45:59
Yeah, yeah. So I’m I I’m really comfortable with complaints because I’ve dealt with it so much in previous roles that I kind of understand the process and understand this is how you put it together and this is how you review it. I’d feel very differently.

Speaker: 46:11
I think you’re inspiring, Rosie. I must admit. Um, I think that the things that you’re doing are just really forward thinking and really what the profession needs, to be honest. And I think there’s a lot people can take away from our conversation.

Speaker 1: 46:25
Yeah, hopefully. And it’s just it’s just paying back everything that everyone’s kind of offered me in the past ten years or so. I’ve had a lot of information. My husband wandering around the background.

Speaker: 46:34
So wave wave him. It’s been super to talk to you today, Rosie. And um thank you very much for your time as well. After following your or your uh things on LinkedIn, I was very keen to talk to you and um I’m glad I have. There’s been some great insights today. Thank you. Thank you for listening to This Is Surveying. If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe and leave a review. It really helps more people discover the podcast and supports the work we’re doing to raise awareness of the profession. You can also join the Surveying Room, the free and independent community from Surveyors UK, bringing surveyors together, breaking down silos, and of course making surveying visible. Just head over to surveyors UK.com to learn more and join today. All the links discussed in today’s episode are included in the show notes.