Hi, I’m Daniela. I’m one of the newest members of the GHE team and I’m a junior lettings administrator. Think of me as admin support with a seriously serious quality control hat on, because it’s my job to ensure that everything about your tenancy is carefully and meticulously completed – from referencing to inventories and agreements (among so many other things) – so everyone ends up happy and exactly where they should be, when they should be there. In other words, if you decide to rent a property through GHE, you’ll be chatting with me quite a bit in the lead up to your move-in date.

When I was asked to contribute a little something for the company blog, I don’t mind saying that I sat there for a while wondering what on earth I was going to write about. After all, with the full span of my career in estate agency totalling just four months so far I thought I might struggle to find the words…

It may be a little unconventional, but I’m going to start off with an admission. I’m quite new to the whole property profession, certainly when compared with my colleagues who all seem to have been born to do this. But everyone needs to start somewhere, don’t they, and I’m glad to say that there’s nowhere I’d rather be soaking up the sector wisdom than where I am.

So, why is a girl from Patras selling homes in London I hear you ask… well, I’m sure you would have if you were here, so I thought I’d pre-empt the question. The answer is that I love people – working with people, chatting with people, building professional relationships with people so I can help them into their dream homes (ok, so the last one is quite new, but I’ve moved quite a lot in my life so I know how important it can be to have somewhere warm, cosy and familiar to come home to each night or morning) and I love, love, love, the chance to help people find their own familiar place.

When you grow up as a Greek-Cypriot Londoner there are three things above all else that matter in life – food, family and community, though the order of priority is up to the individual! The first two are built right there into my DNA, but I’ve always had a broader perspective on ‘community’, extending the boundaries of this group to include those in my postcode community, work community and client community as well. It turns out that this is precisely the attitude I needed to be good at what I do for work.

I didn’t always dream of being an estate agent, shocker I know! I’d grown up in south London determined to have a bright future in the tech sector. I’d studied systems analysis at a college in Clapham South and was set to take the IT sector by storm when I graduated. But, I needed to find a job to tide me by, so I accepted an interview at a local estate agency in Tulse Hill – low basic salary, no commission and I had to use my own car, but it would do for a little pocket money…

The property market has gone crazy. A shortage of supply and a deluge of renters means that we’re living through an unprecedented time for landlords – many of whom can expect to achieve higher rents and have greater freedom to pick and choose their tenants than at any time in recent history… if they’re working with the right agency team, of course.

“The market’s so much more bullish than we’ve seen it in ages – the average time it takes for us to move properties from listed to let is currently 48 hours and it’s often faster than that,” says Lettings Manager Rúben Bernardo.

19 December 2018 was the day that changed my life. It was the day I arrived in London from Romania, ready to start a new life in the big city.

I like to think of myself as a people person, friendly, open and infinitely adaptable, but I’m so glad that I had people to stay with when I arrived, friends I’d known since I was four years old, because they made the transition to my new home so much easier. Just one month later I was sitting in my very first interview with GHE – I loved them, they loved me, so my UK adventure had truly begun.

Youth can be seen by some companies as a barrier to progression, so I feel lucky to have never worked for an organisation like that and proud, as a result, to have recently been promoted to be GHE’s youngest ever lettings manager.

My first job as a seventeen-year-old was work experience at GHE. I must have done something right because they asked me to join them on a year-long apprenticeship programme after that, so I jumped at the chance. I loved the job and I was keen to learn as much as I could, soaking up all the wisdom my mentors had to share with me, no matter which department I was in that month. I started at the bottom, so I got to see how every part of the job worked, and years later I know this has made me a better consultant, seeing how every piece of the puzzle fits together to service our landlords and investors.

When you’re a South London graduate with a passion for travel, discovery, and a drive for personal growth, estate agency may not seem like an obvious choice of profession, but when you’re also fluent in Mandarin and Cantonese and you love, love, love everything to do with property, the way my career has panned out starts to make a little more sense. This is my journey, from part-time takeaway delivery driver to business development and sales manager with a team of my own, in eight short years (because every year doing something you enjoy seems to speed by).

I’m a long way from home, but I’ve never belonged anywhere more than where I am right now, because while I was born in Greece, my heart is most definitely in south London.