A blog about us!

As Cilla would say, 'What's your name & where do you come from?'

My name is Danielle and I am the owner of Diment Property, an independent property agency nestled between Bristol & Gloucestershire.

As is customary, I keep our small team in check, do far too many jobs myself and poke my nose into everything.

I live and breathe property. I love everything about it from quirky uneven walls in old buildings to sleek newly paved front paths, I am all in.

My main role is to ensure that we have happy clients and happy tenants.

90% of our managed properties house long term tenants who are settled and rooted into their homes. Secure houses with fair rents is what we strive to achieve.

As seen in our last blog post, it is becoming increasingly difficult to maintain the affordable rents. We believe that working together with our clients and pointing them in the direction of other professionals who can guide and advise them in other aspects of their property business is what helps to make their property journey that bit better.

Diment Property was birthed following many years working amongst the industry where all I could see were failings. Tenants being massively undervalued, clients being charged ridiculous extras and much of the industry was not moving with the times.

I decided, as stubborn as I am, that we were going to give it a go. After 14 years out of lettings, I was going back in! This time as the one who makes the rules.

I very quickly reached the conclusion that the traditional lettings model was not for me. We tried it, we worked at it and I didn't like it. The attitude of the company did not feel like 'ME' and it was fast breeding bad attitudes amongst the team.

I like to help people, I value every single person who associates with my business. No category of client, be it landlord, tenant or pet rabbit is inferior to the other.

We agents are here to help support landlords to stay compliant and to ensure that they are upholding their responsibilities to their tenants.

Lets face it! Without tenants, neither landlords or agents would have a business.

I started asking uncomfortable questions like, why does this tenant working 30 hours a week not fit the bill because they receive top up benefits? They CAN afford the property. Why does this lovely family miss out on their dream garden because the system says that their guarantor is not suitable. Is there no other way to guarantor? Why are we forcing good tenants to leave properties because you don't believe they should become sharers?

Now, I'm not irresponsible. We have processes in place to protect landlords and as Agents we are heavily regulated but I was still asking myself why so many agencies are saying NO before looking at the tenants circumstances.

It was at this point I started to get involved in the referencing process and I started asking these same questions to our referencing agency. The weird thing is that when I asked the questions, they had a solution. So it wasn't as black and white as the email that says 'unsuitable'. Why was no one looking into why and trying to see HOW we can help them become suitable. Afterall you've gone through the whole selection process from pre apps, to viewings, full applications and now referencing. Working with our account manager I tried to really understand what we could change to streamline our system so that ALL tenants can be considered on circumstance not just computer automation. Over time we changed how we process references and we have now gone back to the old school method of making the final decision in house. Many other agents do this but in my personal opinion, there are still many tenants who aren't getting a look in due to a level of what I call, industry bias. Private residential letting is not just for the working professionals. It's for everyone!

Whilst we are a business and we can not solve every problem with the quick flick of a wand.

If we can throw our passion, a sprinkling of willingness and a little compassion into the fire we will all be better placed to support landlords in finding suitable tenants and in turn, help great tenants to find suitable landlords.

Here at Diment, every process and change involves the timeless British act of milling things over with some Tea & Cake!