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VILLAGE NEWS
NEIGHBOURHOOD WATCH (NHW)
Local Crime.
There were three significant crimes in our area in Oc-
tober.
- A burglary in Perry Rd between the 5th and 14th re-
sulted in jewellery and other valuable items being sto-
len.
- In Town Orchard in Southoe between the 11
th
and
13
th
a burglary was committed in which jewellery and
electrical items were lost.
It is worth noting that, as in many other recent burgla-
ries in this area, damage was caused to a conservato-
ry in a failed entry attempt before entry was gained
through a rear window.
Between the 11th and13
th
a large and heavy
plant trailer was stolen from close to the Buck-
den roundabout where it had been left by the
workmen.
NW Alert is One Year Old.
It is now just over one year since the national NW alert
system was introduced and it is generally acknowl-
edged that it has resulted in a large improvement in
the speed and the amount of crime information being
disseminated by the police and other agencies. How-
ever, the manner in which it has developed has
caused some confusion in its local management.
Under the new system anyone could register with
eCops and/or the NW Alert System to receive crime
information from the St Neots’ or Huntingdon police
respectively whether they were members of the Buck-
den NW or not.
This left existing members of Buckden NW who did
not register with either of those organisations, or were
not on-line, without any regular crime information.
Your coordinators therefore undertook to pass on rele-
vant eCops and Hunts police messages by eMail to
those who were not registered. Those not on line are
reliant on the short monthly summaries in The Round-
about.
Moreover, with so many diverse communication links
now being used, we cannot assess how many of our
residents are registered or with whom and receiving
regular crime information. We are therefore dependent
on feedback from you so please let us know how you
receive crime information and how useful it is.
Police imposters.
The police have issued an urgent warning of an in-
crease in contacts posing as police officers. Four Hun-
tingdon women have been targeted recently. The im-
posters use a variety of stories intended to persuade
people to give them their personal details - be aware,
the police just don’t do that!
Contact details.
Report an incident or suspicious behaviour to the new
single non-emergency number 101. Call 999 if a crime
is in progress or threatened.
Your village NW Coordinators are:
Clive Williams
811828 and Richard West 811467
How to Save a fortune when
you sell your house
Thinking of selling your house this year? What is
your plan of attack? Typically, you would call the
High Street Estate agent to come and value it, take
photos, produce floor plans and market it on the in-
ternet.
The average High Street Estate agent’s
commission for selling your home is 1.5% of the
value
plus
VAT
.
We were selling our house last June, which was val-
ued at £695,000 and that, was a good price! Things
were slow at first and there were not many viewings
as selling a house over £500,000 takes time. Even-
tually we did have 3 viewings scheduled…very excit-
ing. We had a call from our agent to say that he
could not attend two of them as he likes ‘to take
Sundays off’ and
would we mind showing the
house ourselves?
I didn’t mind as we have lived
here over 14 years and certainly know more about
our house than our agent. He had never even
stepped foot in it before! If they offered we would
have had to write the agency a cheque for the sum
of £10,425 plus VAT at £2,085
we would have paid
the agency £12,510. Ouch!
Hmm? Let’s see: we supplied the photographs, we
conducted the viewing, we supplied the tea and bis-
cuits…and I decided to research a more “do it your-
self” approach to selling our property. This is what I
discovered: 95% of homebuyers now look to the
Internet to find a new home.
As I looked into selling our house on Private Sale
websites,
another problem appeared
. They are not
allowed to use Rightmove, Zoopla, or Prime Loca-
tion and that’s where 95% of buyers look to pur-
chase a new home. I finally discovered e-
stateagent.co.uk.They can sell your house and save
you thousands of pounds with no commission fees.
If your house is worth £100,000 or a million it is the
same flat fee AND they offer the exact same ser-
vices as High Street Real Estate agents at no extra
cost.
Their flat fee is just £395 plus VAT and
that’s it!
The only difference is that
You
to do the viewings
that we arrange, after all,
who is better qualified to
show
your
property?
Once an offer has been
made and accepted the whole transaction goes to
the solicitors and our job is over anyway.
If you or any of your family or friends are selling
please call John on 07503 866225 (local agent or
) or the
head office on 01268 209190 or take a look at our
website
( www.e-stateagent.co.uk )for further infor-
mation. If not moving now keep this for later! By the
way we sold our house through e-state in the end
and
saved ourselves
over £12,000!