House and business plans

Despite having only been on the market for two weeks, I’ve received and accepted an offer on my house. It’s roughly what I paid for it, so if all goes to plan I won’t have have lost any money and will have effectively rented the property for the best part of two years (cost of interest plus maintenance work is roughly the same as renting a similar sized property). Although I’m selling and then buying – as opposed to at the same time – I’m going to start calling agents tomorrow so I can see what is available in terms of flats in Didsbury/Withington and the city centre.

Work-wise, things have more or less ground to a halt. I still have one day a week free to pursue other interests though, and there are a couple of business plans which I’m trying to get out off the ground whilst I have the spare time and a steady income – i.e. I’m not taking a risk in doing so.

One idea that I’m currently working on is PHP Recruiters, a specialist recruitment agency for PHP developer vacancies. There are a lot of IT recruitment companies out there, but two major bugbears I have about many of them is that they’re not run by technical people and they don’t answer emails promptly – if at all. I often find myself thinking ‘I could do this more efficiently’, and unlike solicitors I don’t need a licence or qualifications to set up an alternative option. I don’t know if there is a market for a technically knowledgeable recruiter, or standalone services such as organising interviews and external interviewers, but the cost of testing the water is only £5 for a domain name and a few hours of my time writing the content.