Oh, so hi, I’m Alison Fuller, from Character and Country and, I’m what you call an accidental estate agent. I never planned to be an estate agent. I was actually offered a a job, a maternity cover when I bought my first house over thirty years ago, so, yeah, I’ve been an agent for a long long time. I first came to Hereford when I was eleven on a school trip and just fell in love with Longtown, the Black Mountains, the whole Hereford area, so after sort of three or four years of fun in Manchester, I came down to Hereford and the rest is history. I’ve been an agent here since nineteen ninety three just dealing with so many different wonderful properties from small ones to large ones, character, individual, with land, without land, cottages, apartments, new builds, building plots, you name it. I’ve I’ve dealt with many different types of properties over the years. So many people think that all estate agents are the same. Well, actually, we’re not. It won’t come as much of a surprise that estate agents don’t have a very good reputation and that many don’t get return and repeat business. It’s actually less than twelve percent, of return and repeat business for the average estate agent. So I’m really proud to say that we’ve got well over sixty percent of returning customers, so so we must be doing something right and that also leads into the accreditation. There are less than fifteen percent of agents that are actually qualified, so I know that statistic is quite shocking. The industry is changing, there’s new legislation, everything that affects the property market is changing, and how can those agents possibly give you the best advice if they’re not aware of them? So I’m pleased to say that here at Character and Country, I am actually MNAEA with PropertyMark. It basically means that I do continued professional development, continued learning, so I’m always reading about things that are going on in the industry, new legislation, doing training courses, webinars, etcetera etcetera. Colleague Matthew, he is actually a qualified chartered surveyor, he’s MRICS so much the same way he has to do CPD, continued professional development, because the industry is always evolving. There are always new things to learn, there’s always new legislation, there’s always new things which affect the property market. I’m really lucky to work and live in such a beautiful area, and over the years I’ve dealt with property sales in Monmouthshire as far down as Chepstow, right over in Wales, Llandilo, Llandovery, right over on the coast, Aberaeron, Aberystwyth. I’ve sold property on Anglesey. I’ve sold some amazing properties, properties which look like they shouldn’t even be standing. A wonderful property called the Crooked House springs to mind. I don’t need to describe that anymore. You can look it up online, and it is an amazing property. I’ve dealt with castle ruins, even sold a former jousting field, water towers. Some amazing properties. In the thirty plus years I’ve been in agency in Hereford there have been some massive changes. We still don’t have a bypass but I’ve been here long enough to remember queuing up to get into the Crystal Rooms on a Saturday night. I remember the cattle market moving. I was involved with Laing Homes and the development of the old hospital site which is now Victoria Bridge, a lovely apartment complex. Yeah. We’ve got more than one hundred years experience, we’ve got deep roots in the community. Catherine’s lived here all of her life. Matthew has been here for probably in excess of forty years. I’ve been here well over thirty years. We’ve been involved in local community projects as well. I’ve been involved with cat protection, hay cat rescue, various dog rescues amongst other things. Yeah. After I bought the house and and started working then in in estate agency that was when I started accumulating even more animals because at that point I think I got two or three cats maybe, went out on a viewing and the people said to me what’s going on in that barn over there? I said I don’t know, I’ll go and look. Went over, tapped on the door, found it was a cat rescue center, ended up taking yet another cat home and I’ve now lost count of the amount of animals that I’ve accumulated, bantams that, were going to be, cooked in red wine and mushrooms that ended up living at my house. I’ve got rescued ducks, rescued geese, dogs, cats that I’ve picked up on valuations. Yeah. It’s it’s it’s an occupational hazard. I I just can’t help myself. So I was brought up in a a really quirky, unusual property that my father actually built. It’s a a colt bungalow, a wooden property, and when he built it, the villagers thought that there was a shed being built on the top of the hill but it was in actual fact my my family home so I’ve always loved quirky unusual individual property and it was also at that point surrounded by open countryside so I could just walk out into the fields and it was an idyllic lovely childhood so after I’d had my fun up in Manchester I knew that I wanted to move to Hereford, I made that decision when I was eleven, came over to Herefordshire and just moved straight into the countryside and I’ve lived at the end of a track in the middle of a field surrounded by animals ever since, several different tracks now, second property at the end of a track, and also that helps me to relate to to my customers because I I understand their dreams, I understand their properties, you know, I live with land, I know that you start one job on the land and if you don’t finish it off, before you know it, you’ve got brambles and nettles at the other end.
