The Truth About the Rumours

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Estate agent Sarah Mains calls police over false rumours

by Paul James, The Journal

ONE of the North’s leading estate agents has called in detectives over hoax rumours that her firm is going into administration.
Sarah Mains last night told how her staff have received anonymous calls every day for the past month from a man claiming knowledge of the company’s supposed plight.

But as the calls persisted to all her five branches on Tyneside, the rumours swept through the region’s property industry and led to an approach from a company offering its liquidation services.
Her solicitors, Mincoffs, have now written to other estate agents in the North East who are known to have passed on the rumours and are getting messages removed from internet message boards.

While conceding that the industry is facing major challenges at the moment, a defiant Mrs Mains said her business was far from being on the brink.

Yesterday she said: “This started about seven weeks ago. We though it was just jungle drums and we tried to ignore it for weeks, but we’ve had to call the police in.
“It was spreading around anyone who has anything to do with mortgages in the North East. I’ve had customers on the phone worried sick. Throughout the North East’s estate agents and solicitors, it seems to be the main topic of conversation.
“It’s a total prank. What’s more damaging is that the whole industry in the North East believes that this is true. The public are starting to talk about it and that’s what we’re taking seriously.
“It’s ridiculous. At the moment we haven’t got a clue who it is. I’m just focusing on making sure that the staff and the public are genuinely aware that it isn’t true. It’s totally out of control.
Yesterday Northumbria Police said officers will investigate any such reports.

Mrs Mains said Mincoffs have already asked Newcastle Council to remove a message from its intranet from a member of staff who genuinely thought they were alerting colleagues to problems at Sarah Mains.
The solicitors have also had to ask the moneysavingexpert.com website to remove a thread on its forums about the company, and have written what Mrs Mains described as “fiery” letters to other estate agents in the region whose staff are believed to have repeated the rumours to customers.
She said: “Some have been very supportive and others have refused to play ball. A good few will be clapping their hands at the whole situation.”
The calls to Sarah Mains come as Peter Bolton King, chief executive of the National Association of Estate Agents, revealed he is being sent hate mail.
He added: “Estate agents got the blame when house prices went up and some people said they could no longer afford to buy a home, now it’s our fault prices are coming down. Apparently we are responsible for the worldwide credit crunch.”

ON TARGET FOR A RECORD YEAR UNTIL...

SARAH Mains yesterday said the state of the current property market was unprecedented.
Her company laid off 25 staff in a restructuring move after she saw the extent of problems in the US property market at a conference at the end of last year.
Since then she has expanded her letting division as more people are renting, and is also launching an auction house.
Mrs Mains said: "Volumes are down massively across the country. The housing market is hard, but people still want to sell and people still want to buy.
"We’re working extremely hard at the moment to overcome all the problems the credit crunch is creating to allow people to buy. We’ve never had a market where the lenders are dictating everything.
"We were on target for our record year before the Northern Rock announcement. We restructured in December and made 25 people redundant then had a brilliant January and February and thought we had panicked for nothing.
"What we did early, other agents have done in the past few months. I believe that restructuring has saved many more jobs."

SOLD HER HOME TO START UP BUSINESS

IN 2001 Sarah Mains sold her own home to raise the money to launch her own estate agency business.
The first Sarah Mains branch to open was in Low Fell, and now her business employs around 100 people across five branches on Tyneside.
Mrs Mains joint owns the company with her business partner, Paul McKie, and last year they acquired Northumbrian Estates, based in Heaton, Newcastle, and a former solicitor’s office in The Galleries, Washington. They also own David Warden estate agents in Washington.
When Mrs Mains left school in 1985 she joined a hairdressers’ company in Gosforth, but left after eight weeks after injuring her ankle.
After returning to sixth form education, followed by a short spell in a solicitor’s office, she took a job at estate agency NS Bennett.
After taking time out for the birth of her first son, she then joined estate agency group Nationwide Anglia in 1989, before moving to Keith Pattinson for 11 years broken only by a six-month stint in finance in 1999.

From there she set up her own company with Mr McKie and before the Northern Rock announcement last year was aiming to increase revenue from £5m to around £8m.

Staff had a party on Friday night at the Whickham office to celebrate the company’s seventh birthday.

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