Chartered surveyor and entrepreneur Anna Roberts speaks to PropertyWire editor Ryan Bembridge after releasing Home Buyers’ Essentials, a guide book on buying property in England and Wales. The book says it features 50 tips for confident house buying, while it includes everything from understanding the purchase process, to arranging surveyors and identifying potential issues.
How have initial responses been to the book?
They like the format; I arranged the sections to answer questions homebuyers ask. We tried to avoid being too technical, while also giving enough depth to be helpful.
Nobody is going to read this front to back and think it’s the most exciting thing ever, but I envision seeing a copy of it in someone’s house and it looking thumbed, with scribbles and post-it notes. It’s a reference book where the point is that everybody can understand it.
How challenging was it to make the book understandable for everyone?
When I was writing it, I was talking to one of my own mentors from early in my career, who said it would be good to have a glossary in it.
It is hard, because when you have worked in an industry all of your adult life you don’t realise the bits that aren’t day-to-day; you find yourself talking in that language, with acronyms and technical language.
While I had estate agents cast their eyes on different parts of it, I had a freelancer proof read it, as I wanted it to be tested with non-property people.
I can see there being a second edition, as legislation is changing fast. I’ve referenced some planned changes in the book, like the upcoming Renters’ Rights Bill.
Who is your primary audience?
It will be most helpful to first-time buyers, though there’s information for people from all parts of the homebuying journey. What if they’re buying with a family member, for example? Inheritance is another example – what happens if they want to lease the house out? I tried to bring to mind these considerations.
It gives people an opportunity to think about them, go away and do more research.
How is buy-to-let covered?
It’s primarily for owner occupiers, but it also goes into whether there’s a tenant in situ, and what happens if they decide to stay in the property and you become a landlord.
There’s a couple of sections on buying a house as a buy-to-let investment. For example, on legal compliance there’s a checklist of stuff that you need as a private landlord.
How does the book differ from others on the market?
One of the challenges in writing the book was giving enough details of all the elements of homebuying without getting bogged down on one particular chapter.
Other books of a similar ilk tend to focus more on the conveyancing and first-time buyers, but I wanted this to be an end-to-end experience.
The book advertises 50 tips for confident house buying, but there’s actually 63 tips. I thought the title sounded punchier. I put that in the book – spoiler alert – you’re getting an extra 13 and you may as well get used to uncertainty if you want to buy a house!
I’m not making promises, but I can see the book evolving into some kind of series: home sellers essentials, homeowners’ essentials, one for commercial property etc. If I do that I’ll probably collaborate with others.
I spent the best part of a year writing the book – I thought I would get it done in a few months!
Property professionals and good writers don’t always go together. Do you have a background in writing?
When I was doing my A Levels every weekend, I used to go on a local news station and work in the news; I thought I’d go into journalism. I used to enjoy interviewing people and writing stories.
I went to university to study anthropology and realised in a first few months it wasn’t something I was going to be able to commit to. My family put me on a pedestal for being a trailblazer by going to university, so it was hard. However, I realised I was better studying in the real world, and it needed to be something more practical. I was terrified. You were talking £12,000 of debt.
I went to the job centre and said ‘I didn’t know what to do’, and they said ‘you’d be a good candidate for psychometric test’; write S backwards and that kind of thing. The main focus was on aptitude, and one of the main jobs that came up was building surveying.
I had grown up around surveyors because my parents liked to redevelop properties; we’d move into a caravan and they’d work on a property and sell it. So, I looked into a RICS-approved building surveying degree, spoke to my parents, and said ‘I think I’ve made the wrong decision’.
They were shocked, but I said ‘I am suited for that’ and showed them the proof from the test. I then lived at home to save money, and lined up a temporary job at a county court.
Aside from surveying you launched SelfStorageBooker.com, a self-storage marketplace. How did that come to pass?
I was working for [commercial real estate firm] JLL and I started to get itchy feet. You know when you get that sense of ‘where do I go from here?’. I could specialise in things like party wall or dilapidations, but nothing was scratching that itch. I wanted to explore new ideas that weren’t possible in a corporate environment.
I took the leap in 2016 and decided to go self-employed. With storage I thought ‘surely there’s a booking.com for this?’ and there wasn’t. The more I researched into it I realised how many independent storage operators there are.
Self-storage has doubled in size in the past five years in the UK, while last year container self-storage sites increased by 33%. A lot of property investors are looking at it in terms of an alternative investment class – it’s not the most exciting but it’s very consistent in terms of economic uncertainty. I got hooked into it – I’m a bit of a tech geek!
Rolling out the platform got delayed, firstly by covid and also pregnancy, but it was soft launched in 2022.
We are the only site in Europe where you can see a storage unit and book it straight away. We built the tech ourselves and have an in-house team, so it’s a case of growing the business and bringing in new features.
Saturday 8th March 2025 is International Women’s Day. What have been the challenges of working in a predominantly male industry?
On the whole I’ve not had a problem, though there were times when I wasn’t taken seriously. There were occasions with male contractors where my male manager was in the room, and they’d speak to him like I wasn’t even there.
I have heard people on construction sites say ‘I’d give her one’. It’s hard, because in that kind of environment the more you call it out almost the worse you can make it – at least that’s how I felt in my 20s. These days, if I heard that I would feel more confident to say ‘really?’ It’s far more in the spotlight now, and they would be embarrassed to be called out on it.
Have things improved in your time in the industry?
There’s only been a small shift, though in commercial agencies you see more women on that side of the business.
I’ve had colleagues say to me ‘you don’t realise how much power you have as a woman, going to a site’. Instantly the contractors are more apprehensive.
At the end of the day, I focus on getting the job done, and getting the best outcome we can. You have to deploy a lot of emotional intelligence in that situation. I’m not there to embarrass anybody.
‘Home Buyer’s Essentials’ is available on Amazon.co.uk, while you can sign up to Roberts’ mailing list here.
