Property blog: On awards, deposits and areas

I wanted to talk about a few things this week – awards, deposits and areas! Oh how I love a mixed bag of gossip writes Lea Beven.

It's official: Limecastle are innovative, excellent and fabulous!

No, I'm not just being big headed - we have been chosen as finalists for a major annual awards show for estate agents.

After some serious hard work and proving ourselves to the 10 judges (including James Caan – Dragons Den) for the Estate Agency Of The Year 2010, we were selected last week as finalists in two categories.

We ran for Innovator of the year because we believe that we offer something different - that is a professional house share service, door to door services, help for those renting with pets and specialist assistance in setting up professional house shares.

We also entered newcomer of the year because despite having limited investment funding initially and a tiny team we have over 500 rooms on our books and cover four counties.

Anyway enough about us!

Back to you, we have had increased contact from people looking to advertise their rooms with us in lovely places like Ellesmere, Craven Arms, Bridgnorth and Welshpool.

Keep them coming - you might not get too many people contact you via the room sites directly, but remember that we have different avenues of marketing including local recruitment agents and large employers.

Finally, I just wanted to give prospective tenants the heads-up on some issues we have had with landlords protecting deposits themselves.

We have had a few instances where landlords have opted to use the government schemes that mean that they hold onto the deposits themselves.

Then as soon as they have the money they have been pulling it out of the scheme and doing a 'runner' with the money.

What my advice would be is to make a request that it be put in the DPS - this means that it is held by the government and truly is protected. You can ask for proof before you pay them.

Then if your landlord is not so good and seems to be always running from debt collectors – your cash is safe!

Also it is worth remembering that if they do not do a good inventory then you are pretty much going to get all of your money back – it is all about the proof.

So my tip of the week – Don't give up your deposit until you know where they are going!