The managing director of Corrie and Co talks about the highs and lows of the regional property market.

1. What is the name of your company? Corrie & Co Ltd, covering residential and commercial property sales and professional residential lettings.

2. What is your job? Operating the business as a managing director on a full-time basis and, assisted by my teams, valuing property for the purposes of sale and rental. I also provide consultancy services relating to letters for property ownership, the prospects of planning permission, commercial business sales (often in confidence), business leads, significant land developments and individual plots.

3. How long have you been in business? I launched an estate agency business in 1990 from inception as a new start and grew this to one of the largest regional agencies before retiring from that business eight years ago. Corrie & Co started up in March 2009 and is a partnership with the Cavendish family of the Holker Group of Cark-in-Cartmel.

4. What are the strengths of the area’s property sector? The ability to offer excellent value properties, often of good value, in a beautiful setting and throughout south Cumbria. The local population often undervalue the quality of the environment that we enjoy. The property sector is diverse with town-centre terraces often ranging from £60,000 to out-of-town exclusive dwellings now approaching £1m, all within an eight-mile radius.

5. What are its weaknesses and how would you overcome them? The housing stock is still dominated by traditional Victorian properties built as a result of the industrial boom in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. A lot of buyers today need properties that are smaller in size with much easier maintenance, parking and gardens. Shortage of new-build properties over the past 10 years has resulted in the prices of traditional and quality family homes rising in excess of that experienced elsewhere in Cumbria.

6. What’s your favourite place in Cumbria? What a difficult question. One can choose from the beauty of the Rusland and Lyth Valleys to the dramatic scenery of the Wasdale Valley, the open sandy beaches of west Cumbria and the Duddon Estuary, still virtually undiscovered. I think it is fair to say that Cumbria is still the favourite place where I would want to live and work within the UK.

7. What differentiates you from other Cumbrian agents? We pride ourselves on being a local family firm, selling extremely high standards of service to clients and on an individual people-to-people basis. Indeed, this is one of the prime motivators of the Holker Group. Also, we are a modern 21st century estate agent embracing the advantages that information technology offers in the house sale and rental process. We are about to embark on a whole new marketing and administrative system to reflect this.

8. What one thing would you change about your industry? We, as a family and professional business, strive to achieve high standards of service to both our sellers who are our clients and also to buyers, and to ease the hassle and stress of moving home. We wish that more agents would take more care when considering people in the transaction as it is often their largest financial life transaction.

9. What was your best Cumbrian sale? Again, another difficult question - it can be from selling a property where the buyer is under pressure and at a good price within a short period of time to achieving selling price well within excess of that anticipated by the market. Indeed, we have had a number of these this year, resulting in delighted vendor clients.

10. How do we get in touch? Visit our website at www.corrieandco.co.uk