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Always trying to improve our
service
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Events that happened in 2011
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New faster
search system. In a bid to try and speed up our online search system we
have upgraded our server and moved over from ASP to PHP and MySQL database
system, this should help clients navigate quicker and generally improve the
reliability of a clients search experience.
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Online
Mediation Contract Form. In order for us to advertise your property on
our website we have to ask that you print off 2 copies of our mediation
contract sign them and post them back to our office here in Portugal, we
then have to sign and stamp both copies and return a copy back to the vendor
before we can advertise your property. All this takes time especially with
the post between the 2 countries. We now have an online system that
eliminates one part of this procedure. Now its possible to go online and
fill in all your details and then print off 2 completed and pre signed and
stamped contracts, of which you need to return just one to us by post, but
as we have a digitally signed copy registered on our database system we can
go live with your property immediately and when your contract arrives we
store this against your account.
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Algarve Team
Properties Adds Bank Owned Property Through New Website. It's mainly due to the current
economic climate that most of the enquiries we are receiving are for bargain
or under market value properties, which has led us to think that there must
be a large amount of interest in Bank Owned or Repossessed properties. This
is an area that is not easy to get into mainly because the banks can be very
hard to deal with and slow to respond to requests, however after many weeks
of trying we have managed to gain access to a slow but steady amount of
properties that are now owned by the Banks, we have registered and hosted a
brand new dedicated website to this market sector and will be populating the
site with Bank Repossessed properties. This will take time but we have the
agreements in place and will work alongside the banks to advertise their
properties which can represent such great value as the banks are often only
interested in obtaining the outstanding debt which could be well under the
current market value of the property. The new website can be found on the
following link.
http://www.portugalrepossessions.co.uk
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New Look
Website. Well I resisted this because of the immense amount of work, but
we have decided to change some of the website, I have created new listing
pages as well as new pintable's for each property. With over 74,000 files on
our server this was no easy task. I have kept the static page for each
listing which is important for search rankings but the content is now
dynamic, this now means that all our agents can upload their own listings
automatically from anywhere in the world and have all the different sections
of the site update instantly. We have also changed the image deliverance to
a slideshow, cutting down on space on each page as well as increase the
image size, unfortunately this migration will take many days or even weeks
as each property needs to have it details migrated into the database system,
but once its all updated the new system will be very easy to operate and
allow for a better customer experience.
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Events that happened in 2010
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Good times
ahead. ATP is pleased to announce that sales have started to pick up and
we have already surpassed last years property sales due to sensible
reductions in property prices. Properties have now become realistically
affordable again. Not all vendors are in the position to be able to do this
(due to Portuguese mortgages) but on the whole we have been instructed to
reduce prices on a large number of listings, some have dropped by over
100,000 Euros, this has enabled certain listings to become very desirable
again.
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Welcome to
new Team Members. In a bid to put the bad times of the recession behind
us ATP has increased our sales team by 4. Melanie & Duncan will head up the
Central region and Terry & Liz will be heading up the Western region.
Welcome onboard
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Eastern
Algarve Removed. Thanks to a promising start to the year ATP has began
the year with good sales figures for the Central area with interest in the
West increasing, however lack of interest in the East has resulted in ATP
making the sad decision to remove all listings from our website in the
Eastern region. ATP wants to thank Donna for all her hard work in getting
the Eastern region online with her listings but unfortunately Donna has
decided to go back to the UK which left us with the choice to either recruit
or leave the East and concentrate on the other areas.
This was not an easy decision but we think that we can move forward and use
the extra recourses to improve sales in the Central & Western areas.
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ATP sells its
highest priced property, a good start to the year as we start off by
successfully completing on a sale of a large luxury villa situated on a very
prestigious complex, we wish the new owners every happiness in their
wonderful property
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Happy New
Year. We would like to wish all our clients a prosperous New Year.
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Events that happened in 2009
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New Fresh
Look for 2009. Well after 6 years we decided to change the look of our
main banner to what we think is a fresher appearance. We cant change too
much, or the major search engines will penalise us, which may throw us back
down the rankings. So a subtle change which we hope you like.
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Credit Crunch
Hits Europe Hard. Well its what everyone is talking about, and Portugal
is no exception, But home owners are realising that the Euro/Sterling
exchange rate has effected their property values and some have started to
decrease their asking prices. We have a list of these properties on a
separate search page which can be linked to
HERE. Buyers and investors should also be aware that there are
bargains to be had and as a long term investment now is good time to buy.
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Events that happened in 2008
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New Listings
added to main search database. After keeping a careful look at the major
search engines over the last 2 months we have decided to move our static
"New Listings" page onto the database search feature. Google and Yahoo did
not seem to penalise us when we added the new search feature, but we had to
be certain that the search positioning would not suffer due to the removal
of any static pages. Each property will still have its own Static page as
well as each of the major towns. These pages are very helpful in keeping ATP
high in the rankings on the major search engines. ATP will not become a
fully database driven website mainly because of its strong presence at the
top of most search engines. It is these main static pages that give us the
edge over our competition.
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New Search
Added. After much time and data entry we have added a slightly better
search facility to help clients fine tune their property requirements. This
is still a work in progress but we will try and complete this new feature
soon.
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New Search
improvements. We are slowly adding our database of properties to a new
search facility. We have realised that due to the high number of properties
we needed to make it easier to arrange the listings is a way that enabled
the visiting clients to easily see all there suitable properties. At this
time only a limited number of properties have been added but we are adding
every day and hope to see the full property portfolio online soon.
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Events that happened in 2007
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New Listings
Changed. Due to the high volume of listings coming onto our books, we have
felt it necessary to segregate each areas "New Listings" by providing each area
with a dedicated page. This should help show more new properties for each of the
three areas served.
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Western Algarve
needs a new face.
We were sad to hear that Allen was going to move back to Scotland and could no
longer work for us, so we need to find a new person to fill the position. We did
have the position filled but regrettably this didn't quite work out. ATP will
now be actively trying to full fill this position ASAP, until then The central office will
deal with all enquiries that come to our attention. We are sorry for this
inconvenience.
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Floods in the UK
bring down our server. On Monday the 23rd July severe weather conditions
that spread across the UK managed to cause our dedicated server to fail. The
hosting companies help line was also effected by the local telephone exchanges
lines failing in the Gloucester area. On Tuesday morning the server was brought
back up online, BUT the technical service support team failed to re start
certain services that allowed internet access by our clients. I was able to re
start these myself at midday. I am very sorry for any inconvenience this may
have caused. This is the first time in 5 years ATP has been offline for any
length of time and we will try to take further steps to prevent anything like
this ever happening again. Thank you for your support.
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Prestigious
Property Website created. ATP has decided to actively promote the selling of
high end properties, and has developed a dedicated website for this type of
client. This will help visiting clients with a higher budget an easier format
and exclusive website to use and hopefully locate their ideal property.
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Cyprus Team
Properties closes. Unfortunately due to a slow
start CTP has decided to close. The companies website was slow to get noticed by
the search engines (something very hard to achieve in less than 9 months these
days) and as CTP adopted the same company policy as ATP it was decided that we
should close. One good thing has come from this though, Donna who was running
the company over there has now joined us to head up the Eastern area. Having
lived in Portugal for over 5 years she will drop straight into the role and
provide a professional service to our clients.
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Easy Search
Added. We have added a simple easy search facility that allows clients to
easily choose there desired amount of bedrooms with a pool choice by a simple
one click option. The normal search facility has been retained for those of you
that still wish to have a more selectable search facility.
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Events that happened in 2006
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Western Algarve Re-Opens. We
are very pleased to announce that we have recruited an experienced member of
staff to head up the Western Algarve, and help us to start increase our property
portfolio in that area. Allen Hutcheon will be responsible for taking any
enquiries regarding that area and will be very happy to answer any questions
our clients may have. Allen has settled in very well and has increased our
property portfolio in this region and has started selling already. So well done
Allen and keep up the great work.
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New Email address in force
due to high spamming techniques being used on our large site. Over the last
year inbound spam emails have increased to a unacceptable amount so we have
instigated touch measures to combat this illegal intrusion. Over a period of
time we will be migrating our current email addresses to new accounts that have
a much higher protection level. The website has already enforced these new
accounts. Where possible we will try and let all our clients know our new
account details. As you can imaging we cant display the actual addresses on
this site anywhere. This is what causes so much spam. So we have instigated
anti spamming techniques in our website design, and hopefully over time will
eradicate these intrusions. As a visiting client you will see no change other
than being asked for a security number before your email client is opened.
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New Telephone Numbers. Due
to the move of our main office we have upgraded our phone system to allow more
calls to be taken by agents and help improve our service to our clients.
Therefore we have requested a bank of new numbers. The main number is on 4
lines so nobody should get an engaged signal. Also our Fax number has changed
to stay in the same number range. The 0871 number has also changed. The old
numbers will run side by side for a few weeks and be diverted at our expense
until the new numbers take over permanently.
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New Office in Albufeira. We
have just moved into our new office in Albufeira, Which will soon become our
Head Office after all the paperwork has transferred from our Loule Office with
IMOPPI and the local authorities. Situated on "The Strip" the new office will
serve as our main office and will be open to the public for meetings and
general office use. However as ATP are mainly an internet based company we will
not be advertising as a typical front line Real Estate agency. We will have on
display all the necessary documents licenses and paperwork needed to comply,
but will not be advertising properties in the window. We strongly believe that
doing business by the internet only, is the best way to serve our clients. Both buyer and seller.
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Search engine positions
improved again. After an upset with the way Google reported their search
results a few months ago, we have been able to get back on top of things and
have shifted back in the top 1-10 positions on various key phrases. We are
constantly trying to keep ahead of the optimisation game.
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New improved search
facility. We have now developed our own in house database driven search
facility, which will improve our clients ability to narrow down their property
search based on there own property criteria. We also have left the link to the
old search page just in case some find it confusing.
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New advanced contact manager
system. Not seen by the visiting clients. This in house designed database
application allows agents to keep on top of day to day tasks, such as
contacting clients on a specific day and have a record of all communications to
date handy as a reference. Once referred to as "A Tool" it soon became
apparent to us that this system used after 3 years and with over 5,000 clients
on file, has become the backbone of our success.
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New look for 2005/2006. we have added symbols to each of our
listings in both the full lists of properties as well as new listings, golf
and below100K pages. This helps browsers quickly see the most fundamental
information at a glance without having to read too much into the property
description. We hope this helps your navigation around our website.
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ATP is now hosted on a Dedicated Windows 2003 server
, we have gone to considerable expense and have
upgraded our service to offer our clients a fast and efficient website, and as
such have decided to place our massive site on a dedicated server, this means
that ATP website has full bandwidth available to our visitors, offering speed
and reliability.
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We are very pleased to announce
that ATP have strived to become a market leader in Internet Real Estate
solutions by concentrating on providing our clients with an up to date and
current web site that is updated daily. We also promise
never to place bogus properties at tempting prices to lure clients to make an
enquiry. Above all we can only rely on this website and recommendations by
previous clients to keep the business going. So for us this is paramount that
every visitor that makes contact with ATP will be treated with respect and
honesty.
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