London Shamen Blog: Even a scoundrel needs somewhere to live

For any media organisation, house price stories along with anything about the Duchess of Cambridge, are the if-all-else-fails ratings winners. You might say the last refuge of a scoundrel.

But even a scoundrel needs somewhere to live, and interest in the property market is undeniable. What will to happen to prices in Scotland following the No vote in the referendum provides a rich seam of potential content for companies involved in buying, selling, building, renovating, furnishing or advertising houses there.

The National Association of Estate Agents was hot on the case last week, telling Glasgow’s Herald newspaper that the certainty of the No vote was “good news for Scottish estate agents and their customers” but warning that prices could be temporarily disrupted in the event of a surge of properties coming to market from sellers who had held back until after the result. Meanwhile Strutt & Parker told the Guardian that international buyers of million-pound Edinburgh properties were back on board as early as the Friday morning after the vote.

However your company does not need the ear of a national newspaper to get its voice heard – the top Google search result for “house prices Scotland” belongs to the canny Rightmove rather than any media outlet, and takes you to an interactive map where you can search the prices of sold houses by location.

Your business could mark itself out as a commentator by posting a video interview on the state of the market with the head of your Edinburgh or Glasgow office on your website and YouTube. A top 10 best Scottish castles/crofts/tenements for sale should be straightforward for a property company to put together and promote via its own social media channels. People really do care about the subject, and you have the information they want.