How did New Year’s resolutions start?
The first New Year’s resolutions date back over 4,000 years ago to ancient Babylon. The Babylonians are said to have started the tradition during Akitu, a 12-day New Year celebration.
During the Akitu festival, the ancient Babylonians would plant crops, crown a new king (or pledge their loyalty to the reigning king), and make promises to the gods to pay their debts and return any borrowed items. They believed that if they kept their word, the gods would look favourably on them for the year ahead. If the Babylonians broke their promises, they would fall on the bad side of their gods.
The history of New Year’s resolutions continued in ancient Rome. Emperor Julius Caesar introduced a new calendar in 46 B.C. which declared January 1st as the start of the new year. This new date honoured Janus, a two-faced god who symbolically looked back into the previous year and forwards into the new year. The Romans would offer sacrifices to Janus and make promises of good behaviour for the year ahead.
New Year’s resolutions were also made in the Middle Ages. Knights would renew their vow to chivalry by placing their hands on a live or roasted peacock. The annual “Peacock Vow” would take place at the end of the year, as a resolution to maintain their knighthood values.
Why do people make New Year’s resolutions?
Modern New Year’s resolutions are a largely secular practice, with most people making resolutions to themselves rather than promising gods. The focus of the tradition is on self-improvement, with people taking time to reflect on their goals.
Today’s resolutions are often health focused, driven by the indulgence of the Christmas period. The symbology of the New Year also makes it a great time to wipe the slate clean and start fresh after December 31st.
At least 40% of people in the United States set New Year’s resolutions, while 22% of people in the UK aim for self-improvement with a resolution.
Yet, research shows that 80% of people break their resolutions by the first week of February and only 8% are successful in achieving their goals at all.
Despite having over 4,000 years of practice, these figures aren’t likely to improve any time soon. Experts say we’re doomed to fail when making New Year’s resolutions thanks to unrealistic expectations.
We set lofty goals that quickly become overwhelming, and we fail to make a plan to achieve these goals. The key to completing your resolution is to break it down into small, tangible steps. Instead of saying, “I want to get fit”, set a specific goal like going to a gym class every Monday and Wednesday.
Are you looking for inspiration for your New Year’s resolutions in 2020? Here are some of the most common resolutions made on January 1st each year.
You could decide that your New Years’ resolution is to move home – if so, then January is a great month to start planning for a move. If you would like a free market appraisal call 01134 676 400
W:davidphillip.co.uk e: info@davidphillip.co.uk a: 86, Leeds Road, Bramhope, Leeds
So, you have decided to sell your home and research shows that January is always a busy time, with the impact of January sales encourages people looking to move for various reasons. You will want to choose an agent that will get you the best price in the quickest time.
Modern technology to support your sale
At David Phillip Estate Agents we have clever techniques to ensure your property reaches the biggest audience by using all the key Property Portals. We use the most modern technology to support your sale too, including 3D virtual tours and local area videos, plus effective social media campaigns.
We are confident that our professional photographer will showcase your property in the best way possible, but a little preparation on your side can make that extra difference too, and by this we don’t mean running the Hoover around the house and putting a few things under the bed!
Here are a few tips that will ensure your property is show-cased in the best way possible to encourage a quicker sale and at the best price.
Outside the property
Curb appeal – this is what a potential buyer will first see when viewing your home and therefore it is important that it is a positive one. Ensure the door is painted to a high standard with appealing hardware that can easily be seen, steps are clean, no dead leaves and no overflowing dustbins. When you are having your photos taken, remove any vehicles from the front of the property. If your photo doesn’t have lighting outside then use the photographic enhancement service at David Phillip Estate Agents
Wash the windows and doors – another important part of ensuring good Curb appeal
Mow the lawn and de-weed – ensure the front garden is well kept, cut back the grass and get rid of the weeds – if your property looks good from the outside then people will want to take a look inside
Clean the gutters – dirty gutters are a sign of a badly kept property, also clogs can result in water damage both internally and externally. Blockages and obstructions can also become a home for unwanted pests such as bees, birds and rodents
Straighten stone slabs - these can look really unsightly, and can also be dangerous
Potted plants – these can be cheap to buy, are easy to look after and make the front of a property look much more appealing, plus they can be moved around if required.
De-clutter
This is particularly important especially after Christmas when you don’t have Christmas decorations hanging around. By getting rid of clutter, not only will your home appear bigger, which is an advantage when your property photos are being presented, but it will also give the impression that the home has been well looked after.
We have a rule we follow, ‘use it, love it, bin it’ – use these early stages of home selling as an opportunity to take things to the tip, charity shop, or sell on local websites, E-Bay or Gum Tree. Not only will you make some money but also start getting rid of things in advance of removal day – and less things to move will have an impact on the overall removal cost. If you are looking for a professional de-clutterer, we recommend Clutter Therapy based in Leeds.
De-Personalise
You have probably had some wonderful times in your current home, but when it comes to selling try to think of it as a house, not a home, after-all it soon won’t be. Try and get into this mind-set early on, ensure that the property looks great but allow viewers to use their own imagination – your taste may be completely different to theirs. Remove personal photographs and ornaments – you’ll need to pack these anyway. There is a balance between your home having too many personal items and de-personalising it, so play around with keeping some items but removing others.
Deep-clean and repairs
No one will buy a dirty house including you, so try and leave the house in the same condition as the one you would like to move into. You may have managed to live around those small repairs, but if they are easy to mend then make sure this has been sorted before any viewings take place, and if you don’t enjoy DIY then hire a professional who can do the job for you – holes in walls, creaky doors and broken shelves, don’t look appealing!
So now your house is ready to market make sure you choose the right Agent to sell your home
If you are looking to sell your Property in 2022, then call David Phillip FRICS - with over 30 years’ experience selling properties in North and West Yorkshire you can be sure you are using an Estate Agent with local knowledge enabled by the best technology and modern sales techniques. T:01134 676 400 w: davidphillip.co.uk a: 86, Leeds Road, Bramhope, Leeds
Recently, the Government announced that as Part of the Covid-19 Plan B, that where possible employees shouId be working from home again where possible.
In today’s busy working world, the distance from home to work can often be a long and difficult commute.
The impact of driving to work can also eat into your working day, whilst also impacting on the environment – home working can reduce your carbon footprint with car emissions as well as saving travelling expenses.
Today you do not necessarily need to physically go to work, you just work regardless of the location, and as long as you have the right environment in which to work, supported by the best technology and it works well for you as well as for the company you are employed by then this can be a viable alternative as long as it doesn’t impact on the Customer experience
If you are a small business then, working from home can also provide the advantage of not paying hefty business charges too.
So how do you make this transition from travelling to work to arriving straight to your ‘desk’ which can be a bit jarring first thing on a morning! - go straight to your ‘ to-do’ list and by starting first thing, this can be much more effective than starting with breakfast and allowing the morning sluggishness to set in – have your breakfast mid-morning when you are ready for a break
Structure your day like you would a working one (pretend you are actually going to work), working from home means you are your own personal manager, but try to segment what you do over the course of the day, and don’t feel guilty if you take a break!
Take advantage of morning hours to plough through meaty projects without any distractions, and leave calls and virtual meetings for the afternoon, having uninterrupted time can help with higher productivity, and modern technology means you can still attend meetings albeit in a virtual way .
Find out what music motivates you for different tracks, this can help if you have been used to having noise from an office in the background.
If you work from home, but have other members of the family around then maybe they need reminding that just because you are working from home doesn’t mean you are ‘home’, as it is easy to get distracted by things going on around you.
Put a loose definitive ‘finishing time’ in each day – you would if you had a train to catch, and try not to let your work life bleed into your home life – a boundary for both areas is important
Choose a dedicated work space, this provides you with a place where you specifically ‘ work’, it might be a local coffee shop, table or chair, but you may want to create a room within your home that provides a place to work
If you are thinking of selling your home and your property has a designated study, then this is a key factor for people looking to buy, this can also add a price premium to your property too.
So if you are considering selling your home – and January is a great time for marketing, call now for a free market appraisal with David Phillip FRICS on 01134 676 400 w: davidphillip.co.uk a: 86, Leeds Road, Bramhope, Leeds
As an exceptionally busy 2021 draws to a close, the prediction from Rightmove is that it expects a closer to normal though still busy market in 2022.
One sign of the traditional norm is the continuation of the seasonal fall in the price of property coming to market, down by 0.7% compared to a 0.6% fall this time last year.
Rightmove state that house prices are forecast to rise by another 5% in 2022, however some of the edge will be taken off sellers’ pricing power by increasingly stretched buyer affordability, and more buyer choice boosted by previously hesitant sellers now gearing up for a New Year move. This would be quite timely, as most agents are seeing fully available stock for sale at a record low. Promisingly, requests from homeowners to estate agents to have their home valued are 19% up on this time a year ago, indicating that much-needed buyer choice will be coming to the market in the New Year.
Tim Bannister, Rightmove’s Director of Property Data commented “the kind of frenzied market we’ve seen in the last 18 months happens only a few times in most home-owners ‘buying and selling’ lifetimes, exacerbated by the even rarer event of a global pandemic, pushing homes higher up most people’s priorities. While the pandemic is still having an ever-changing impact as we head into the New Year, we expect a housing market moving closer to normal during the course of 2022”.
Owners who come to market in the next few months and are judged by prospective buyers to be asking an affordable price, will therefore find their chances of a successful sale very high. That will put those sellers looking to buy again in a very powerful position to secure their next purchase, where they could well be in competition with several other buyers. Being a ‘power buyer’ who has sold subject to contract or can buy without selling has increasingly become a requirement this year and will continue to be the case in 2022. Proving you have access to funds, including a mortgage agreement in principle is also becoming a ‘must-have’, not only to get higher up the pecking order, but also to speed up the process.
A sign of the property market’s frenetic activity is that seven out of ten properties on Rightmove are sold subject to contract – this number has never been higher and with two months of data yet to be reported, 2021 has already seen the highest level of completed home sales since 2007.
David Phillip commented, some sellers are already gearing up to selling their homes in the New Year which starts with the Boxing Day Bounce on Rightmove and continues through January. However, despite high demands, buyers will have limits to what they are expected to pay, and with the availability of stock so low, any property that hangs around will stick out like a sore thumb – setting too high an asking price, may seem a good idea at the time, but in the long term this could have an adverse effect on your property sale. At David Phillip Estate Agents, we price realistically but competitively, this gets more people looking around the property and therefore more people likely to offer, generally resulting in an ‘over asking price’ sale”
Yorkshire and Humberside continue to perform well according to Rightmove at plus 0.3% v the previous month and plus 6.1% v the previous year, with an average of 36 days to sell.
So if you are looking to sell and take advantage of what has been forecast as a buoyant January call David Phillip FRICS for a free market appraisal on 01134 676 400 w: davidphillip.co.uk a: 86, Leeds Road, Bramhope, Leeds.
Illumination Street is an annual event that celebrates the passion, flair and effort that people across Britain undertake to brighten up their streets in the build-up to Christmas. It’s cold outside but gardens can still dazzle all through winter. And festive displays give streets a huge lift on gloomy nights, shining a festive light on spectacular shrubs and trees.
A decade ago, it was just a few hardy souls who went wild for Christmas. But with the advent of inexpensive, reliable LED lighting, gardens up and down the country are transformed into attention-grabbing winter wonderlands throughout December. We want to celebrate the best displays across Britain, from those dedicated home owners who raise money for charities, to others who just want to make their streets sparkle. These displays can really brighten up communities as the nights draw in – and anything that encourages an inclusive community experience through their garden lighting displays is a good thing.
The aim of Illumination Street is to inspire adults and children to use their imagination and light up the country during the festive season.
If you look around the streets there are some beautiful Christmas Decorations in the Leeds area. Such as Bramhope, Adel, Cookridge and Pool-in-Wharfedale.
If you are considering selling your home, we can arrange to have your property photos taken before the Christmas decorations go up for marketing at the beginning of 2022 – remember Rightmove see the greatest audience traffic on Boxing Day and in January.
For a free market appraisal with David Phillip FRICS call 01134 676 400.
W:davidphillip.co.uk a: 86, Leeds Road, Bramhope, Leeds. E: info@davidphillip.co.uk
At David Phillip Estate Agents we are currently keeping a very close eye on Government advice around the new Covid-19 variant Omicron, which may be more transmissible than Delta, but there are still many unknowns at play.
Our business has been designed to ensure everything is ‘cloud-based’ which means most interactions can be handled remotely. We are still able to have visits in our offices but are asking that all visitors wear facemasks as we will be doing.
It is really important that we keep our customers and employees safe at all times so please see below an update regarding our protocol for viewings and valuations
Viewings
Initially we recommend that all viewings should be conducted via 3D virtual tours from the comfort and safety of your home – if you are interested in potentially making an offer on a property then we will follow up with a ‘physical’ viewing.
All viewings will take place by appointment and only involve members of a single household, with no more than two people from the same household. Unfortunately we ask that children do not attend the viewing.
When viewing the property we ask that you wear a face mask and use hand sanitiser.
If you would please avoid touching door handles, stair bannisters and work surfaces during the viewing, these will have been wiped down prior to the viewing for your protection. We will also be following the guidelines around PPE .
We will keep our distance whilst undertaking all viewings and stand side by side rather than face to face.
We recommend that all owners of properties stay outside the property whilst the viewing is taking place.
When viewings are unaccompanied both the viewers and the homeowner should conduct themselves in the way we advise to ensure the safety of all parties.
Once the viewing has taken place the homeowner should ensure that surfaces such as door handles, bannisters and work-surfaces are cleaned with standard household cleaning products and if towels have been provided these should be washed or disposed of safely
To ensure everyone’s safety, we will not be carrying out physical viewings if:-
Valuations
We are comfortably able to conduct ‘physical’ valuations, but do have the option of conducting virtual valuations too if you prefer . If you decide to market your property with us then we will follow this up with a ‘physical’ valuation to re-assess the price of the property.
During the valuation we will keep our distance as recommended and stand side by side rather than face to face.
We request that you stay outside the property during the valuation if possible – or remain in one room.
All internal doors should be left open prior to the valuation and door handles, work surfaces and stair bannisters should be thoroughly cleaned prior to the visit
Once the valuation has taken place the homeowner should ensure surfaces such as door handles are cleaned with standard household cleaning products and towels disposed of safely or washed where appropriate.
We will leave you with a marketing pack for your information – we will than follow-up with a call to answer any questions.
To ensure everyone’s safety we will not carry out physical valuations if:-
Thank you for following these guidelines, at David Phillip Estate Agents your safety is a priority us.
Cyber Monday 2021 falls on Monday 29th November.
Cyber Monday is one of the biggest shopping events of the year, an online-focused extension of Black Friday that can be a brilliant opportunity to scoop up deals, discounts and offers from a variety of retailers ahead of Christmas.
And much like the Black Friday deals, you can expect price drops on all types of gear, including many of the best smartphones of the year, some of the best tablets on the market – and likely we’ll see Nintendo Switch Black Friday deals, too.
Make no mistake: browsing the internet during Cyber Monday will be confusing, overwhelming and may quickly leave you in a daze. Are you actually getting a good deal? Do you really need a new 75-inch TV? What store is best? Deal-hunting is a bit of an art – so here are some of the key points to consider:
Best Cyber Monday offers:
More and more people are now doing shopping online, and at David Phillip Estate Agents we are also offering more online options too.
Take a look at our 3d vitual tours and area videos – viewing properties in North Leeds from the comfort of your armchair has never been easier.
People buy an area not just a home – have a look at our local area videos – we are not just about static marketing and literature.
If you are looking to book a viewing or arrange a valuation with David Phillip Estate Agents then this can all be done online too
December is potentially a great time for selling your home, there tend to be fewer properties on the market which can often result in higher prices and a quicker sale. If you would like a free-market appraisal call David Phillip FRICS on 01134 676 400
W:davidphillip.co.uk e: info@davidphillip.co.uk a: 86, Leeds Road, Bramhope, Leeds.
Leeds has a wealth of places which are offering festive party menus on the run up to Christmas and Christmas Day menus for the big day itself.
Here are some of the best places to explore:
December is potentially a great time for selling your home, there tend to be fewer properties on the market which can often result in higher prices and a quicker sale. If you would like a free-market appraisal call David Phillip FRICS on 01134 676 400
W:davidphillip.co.uk e: info@davidphillip.co.uk a: 86, Leeds Road, Bramhope, Leeds.
Think Christmas is a quiet time for a property search? – think again. Every year Rightmove’s traffic at least doubles between Christmas Day and early January.
In January 2021, visits compared to the previous year were up by 30% year on year and on January 4th 2021 there were over 6 million visits on Rightmove.
Boxing Day also has a huge spike with viewing figures up by 54% year on year
If you want to take advantage of this huge spike in buyers then now is the time to start getting your home market ready.
At David Phillip Estate Agents we use lots of clever techniques and some of the best technology to ensure your home is marketed to its full potential in the dark months of winter:-
So, if you are looking to sell in January and keen to reach the Rightmove spike straight after Christmas, when families are generally together and thinking about their plans for the next year, start thinking about the marketing now and call David Phillip Estate Agents for a free market appraisal t: 01134 676 400 w: davidphillip.co.uk e: info@davidphillip.co.uk a: 86, Leeds Road, Bramhope.
If you are thinking of marketing your home, then making sure that it has great kerb appeal is really important. In December your garden will not be as photogenic as in summer, but there are ways you can make your property look more inviting – Christmas wreaths are a great way, as well as some sparking Christmas lights.
Wreaths are a popular Christmas decoration, adorning homes around the world throughout the festive period. Making your own Christmas wreath is a fun and rewarding craft project, giving you the chance to create something completely unique to decorate your home with.
What You’ll Need:
Instructions
Now all you need to do is find the perfect spot to hang your new wreath! If you’ve used fresh foliage, hanging your wreath outside will help it keep for about 4 weeks. If you hang a fresh wreath inside, it will last approximately 2 weeks – although this will vary depending on which type of foliage you’ve used.
If using foliage isn't quite your thing, why not have a go at making this simple painted and embellished wreath for a quick and easy festive activity? You could even make a whole bunch of these adorable wreaths and string them together with ribbon to create a unique garland.
Our friends at Lilys of Bramhope has spaces available for their Christmas Wreath workshop on Monday 29th November for those who want to learn from experts and socialise with others in a fun creative environment.
December is potentially a great time for selling your home, there tends to be fewer properties on the market which can often result in higher prices and a quicker sale. If you would like a free-market appraisal call David Phillip FRICS on 01134 676 400
W:davidphillip.co.uk e: info@davidphillip.co.uk a: 86, Leeds Road, Bramhope, Leeds.
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