Nita Nicola has been providing consultancy services to letting agents
since April 1999. She became an independent consultant in March
2000, prior to which she was a Director of the Liz McCallum consultancy.
Nita has been involved in lettings since 1986, when she joined
Home from Home Ltd (later to become John D Wood & Co Lettings).
Initially employed as PA to the managing director, during her eleven
years with the Agency she progressed from Lettings Administrator
at their Wimbledon Village branch, to Manager of the centralised
Legal Administration Department, which she was instrumental in establishing,
and which serviced six lettings offices. Her final role with John
D Wood was that of Legal & Compliance Officer supporting their
fourteen lettings offices.
Nita is a Member (Fellow) of the Association of Residential Letting Agents and aims to offer letting agents the professional and confidential
assistance they require to advance and maintain to a high standard
their day to day business of letting and management.
Amongst the services she offers, Nita considers Compliance
Auditing to be one of the most important. She believes that
every agent serious about quality control and risk management should
have a compliance auditing programme in place in order to monitor
and maintain the integrity of their systems. Nita has been undertaking
just such a programme for Knight Frank’s lettings operation
since March 2000.
Nita also works with Agents venturing into lettings for the first
time, assisting them in establishing secure and compliant procedures
from the outset, developing efficient Agency documents and providing
staff training. Such Agents include Curchods, the Surrey based Estate
Agent, and the Estate Company in St John’s Wood, London.
Nita has a close working relationship with SPA
Microsystems, the developers of the successful internet based
estate agency software ASPASIA. She has created comprehensive Agency
document packs designed to complement the system which are available
configured and loaded onto the system at set up. The documents can
be tailored to the individual Agents’ requirements and maintained
thereafter to reflect changes in legislation to ensure they are
always up to date and compliant.
Over the years Nita has also worked with industry-connected organisations.
For example; she was appointed by The Independent Housing Ombudsman
to undertake the revision and streamlining of the literature and
forms for the original government Tenancy Deposit Scheme during
the pilot period; and she is an approved Independent Auditor nominated
by ARLA to undertake Risk Management Assessments where considered
necessary as part of their complaints investigation procedures.
Other services include writing Procedures
Manuals and devising Bespoke Agency
Documents (including Tenancy Agreements, Terms of Business and
standard letter directories), undertaking Systems
Reviews and providing Staff Training – including Staff
Induction Training and In House
Training Workshops.
In addition, Nita offers "off-the-shelf" Standard
Document Packs, including Tenancy Agreements and Terms of Business,
and Distance Learning Modules
for those agencies for whom in-house training is not an option.
With the introduction of new legislation, including the Unfair
Terms in Consumer Contracts Regulations and more recently the Deposit
Protection Scheme requirements of the Housing Act 2004, Agents have
had to reconsider their Agency documents and as a result there has
been much demand for the Document
Revision service.
As well as those named above, other agents with whom Nita has worked
include the Townends Group, Allsop & Co, JAC Strattons, Fitz-Gibbon
Residential, Coombe Residential and Green Locations, to name but
a few. A full list of those who have benefited from Nita’s
services, and what some of them have to say about her, can be found
on the home page.
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