Staying up-to-date with industry news
I've been busy the last couple of days - Yesterday I managed to fix a few problems with the site (thanks to those of you who took the time to let me know, appreciated). Today I've been darting about and basically achieving nothing at all!
Fortunately, I suppose, the newsflow has been quiet - Calm before the storm, no doubt (Hint: Thursday is the day CLG meets with the RICS etal).
Oh, I have just noticed though, that apparently, on the very same day Ruth Kelly announced the delay of HIPs (Tues 22nd May), LMS announced that they had "pre-sold" 150,000 HIPs to brokers and estate agents. Dominic Toller (LMS, director of marketing and new business), said:
"With the Commons decision effectively ending the debate on HIPs, those people who have held off from doing anything about packs will now have to move very quickly indeed if they are to provide a HIP service which can compete in time."
Trust that Ruth Kelly to come along and both bury the story and completely make a mockery of it at the same time, eh!
(Note to LMS: I'd link to your site but for the fact that it's seemingly been offline for about 6 weeks now!)
Anyway, with the news a bit slow, I thought I'd share how I keep up with it, in case it's something you'd like to do.
Google Alerts
Did you know, Google can adjust its search results based on sudden search spikes from its users? That's right. Sometimes it can "know" about a news event before the press.
Sign up to Google Alerts and it will email you any new content it sniffs that matches the keywords (or phrases) you tell it to watch.
I only monitor for two phrases personally:
(Tip: include the quotes for exact-matching)
Try variations if you like but I find those terms more than enough (expect the same news from different sources).
Forums
Obviously!
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HomeInspectorForum - The daddy!
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Asset Skills Energy Assessors - Now pre-moderating [Update: Now closed]] (Come on Tom!)
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EnergyAssessors Yahoo Group - Seems to be dying
Blogs
There are relatively few industry-only blogs as I write. I hope that changes (if you have one, let me know) In fact, I only know of one truly HIP-related blog (present company excepted, of course). Before I drop the link however, for convenience, each link below goes directly to the respective RSS feeds - So unless you're using Internet Explorer 7 (or higher), or a blog-reader, for instance, it might look gibberish.
Look to the top-right of this page for a link explaining what RSS is and a sampling of blog-readers (I personally use the Maxthon browser which has one built-in).
Feeds
NRG Experts - Neil Kurz (The industry-only blog I mentioned)
Mortgage Solutions - Mixed property/mortgage news
Firstrung - First-time buyers news
DCLG News Releases - Press releases from the horses mouth
Estate Agency News - Estate agency news
Labour Party (Sustainable category) - Few posts... you never know (when it works!)
Energy Performance Certificates - You have to ask?!
Apart from Neil and I, the other blogs cover a more broader category and tend to be press-releases, rather than conversational (and oppinionated). A couple however - like Mortgage Solution and Firstrung, for instance - can be OK for news when there's something going on.
Hope that's useful to some of you anyway.
Hopefully, some time this week (no promises), I hope to (finally) offer blogs to any DEA who fancies their own soapbox but either doesn't have a site, or simply doesn't want the hassle of setting one up - I'll keep you posted.
Tags: debris
