Latest news from the team including product updates, tricks and tips, relevant industry news and other topics.
General
We have now released initial support for long term rental properties!
Viewing & Creating Rental Properties
To get started, browse to the properties tab, immediately you’ll notice two new sidebar tabs on the left, these allow you to filter the list between sale (the default) and the new rental type.
To create a rental property, click the "New Property” button as normal, at the top of the form you’ll see a new drop down option called Tenure, from this select "Rental”.
When you do this, several options on the form change, most notably the price becomes monthly, price type is removed and the statuses change to be appropriate for rentals.
Fill out the details the same as you would for sales and your rental property is ready to go.
Custom Fields
If you have custom fields setup for properties you would have previously defined them under "Property”. Now you have 3 options:
Property - These fields will display for both types, sale and rental.
Sale Property - These fields will show for sale properties only.
Rental Property - These fields will show for rental properties only.
Applicants & Requirements
Applicant requirements now feature a new field called Tenure to specify whether the applicant is looking to buy or rent, and this has been incorporated into applicant search, applicant matching and CSV exports. All existing requirements have been set to sale.
Website Integration
As rental properties are typically searched in the thousands price range as opposed to hundreds of thousands your website will need some adjustments if you intend to allow your visitors to search rental properties.
Rental properties for the most part will display with standard and existing templates although if you have either sale_property or rental_property templates available, they will be used before falling back to the standard property template, giving you the option to customise the individual templates more heavily should you need.
And beyond
This is our initial release for rentals allowing the basic functionality for listing and dealing with enquiries. We look forward to any feedback that you may have and to expanding further into features for rentals in the coming months.
This post was posted in:
General
Software Updates
EU directive 2002/91/EC (The energy performance of buildings) requires that as of June 1st 2013 all properties coming onto the market for sale in the EU must have obtained an Energy Performance Certificate (EPC), properties already on the market must apply for an EPC within 1 week of this deadline, and have obtained the EPC within a further 3 weeks.
What is EPC?
The Energy Performance Certificate (EPC) also known as Certificado de Eficiencia Energetica (CEE) in Spain is designed to give buyers an idea of how energy efficient the property is, a property scoring a higher energy efficiency will have lower ongoing bills for heating as well as lower carbon dioxide emissions.
Properties are scored from A to G, A being very energy efficient and G being not energy efficient, with a further rating for the potential score if adequate measures are taken to improve the property. A standard graph has been designed to communicate these values clearly to buyers, much like food labels.
How to create EPC Graphs with Advance Agent
To help you display this information, you will now find a new side menu option on properties labelled "EPC Graphs". Selecting this will allow you to enter the current and potential values for both Energy Efficiency and Environment Impact from the properties certificate. This will then generate standard graphs, as the following example shows:
These can be included on your website or print material relating to the property and makes it very easy for you to communicate this information to your buyers.
A quick modification is needed to your website templates to enable automatic inclusion of the EPC Graphs on property details pages, please open a support ticket to request this update.
This post was posted in:
General
Software Updates
Welcome to our new product site! Advance Agent - our cloud based software for Estate Agents has been invite only to date while we have been building additional features and scalability. Now proven with a mature technology stack, we're opening our virtual doors to the public. We're now looking forward to expanding our team and of course to welcoming more Estate Agents to Advance Agent.
One of the main goals behind the new website is to openly showcase what Advance Agent does as well as provide simple, clear pricing information and allow people interested in using Advance Agent for their business to request a demo or even signup immediately online!
We'll be steadily adding to the content on the site over the coming weeks and months. If you want to follow the latest news you can check out our blog, follow us on twitter or friend us on facebook.
If you're looking for new Estate Agency Software for your business, please take the tour.
This post was posted in:
General
