Contribute to the property blog
Write For Us
We publish practical writing about looking after buildings. If you know one part of that work properly, from doing it rather than from reading about it, we would like to see what you have to say.
This blog exists for one reason. Most property problems are cheap on the day they start and expensive six months later, and the only real difference is whether anyone was looking. Anything that helps a reader spot a fault earlier, or understand what a trade is actually telling them, belongs here.
You do not need to be a professional writer. You do need to know your subject.
What we publish
Our work splits into four areas, and so does the blog. A submission that lands usually sits squarely inside one of them. The lists below are starting points, not a menu — a better idea of your own is more welcome than a safe idea of ours.
Property maintenance
The routine, unglamorous work that keeps a building dry and sound.
- Flat roofs, and what shortens their life
- Window and door seals going hard
- Pointing, brickwork and render
- Loft ventilation, and why insulation alone is not enough
- Reading a maintenance schedule without glazing over
Repairs and improvements
Decisions, costs, and the point where patching stops being worth it.
- When a repair becomes a replacement
- How to brief a trade so two quotes are comparable
- Small accessibility changes that genuinely help
- What tends to go wrong in phased work
- Materials that cost more and last longer, and ones that do not
Safety and compliance
Written plainly, for the person who owns or manages the building.
- Alarm testing that actually gets done
- Keeping track of check intervals
- Fire doors and escape routes in blocks
- Water systems in a property left empty
- Older buildings, and what to leave well alone
Clean and green spaces
Grounds, drainage, and everything outside the walls.
- Where water goes when the ground is baked hard
- Pressure washing done badly, and the damage it leaves
- Trees near walls, drains and roofs
- Bin stores and shared areas nobody owns
- Planting that survives a cold snap
What makes a submission work
- It comes from doing the work. One paragraph about a job that went wrong teaches more than a page of general advice.
- It is specific. Name the material, the season, the failure, the tool. Vague writing is forgettable writing.
- It is honest about money. Ranges, and the reasons behind them. Invented averages help nobody and we take them out.
- It knows who it is for. A homeowner, a landlord, a block manager and a holiday-let owner have very different problems.
- It is yours. Written by you, in your own words, and published nowhere else.
What is not a fit
Being blunt about this saves everyone an afternoon.
Please do not send
- Pieces written to promote a product, a brand or a service
- Text produced by a tool and tidied up afterwards
- Anything already published elsewhere, in whole or in part
- Legal, financial or structural instruction dressed up as an article
- Press releases, company news, or a case study about your own firm
- General advice assembled from other articles on the same subject
How to send it in
Pitch, if you want to
One paragraph on the subject and the angle. We will tell you whether it fits before you spend an evening on it. Pitching is optional — a finished draft is just as welcome.
Write it
Between 900 and 1,500 words. Short paragraphs, real subheadings, plain English, British spelling. A Word document or a Google Doc is ideal.
Email it over
Send it to hello@berksawactivepropertycare.com with Write For Us in the subject line, and add two lines about who you are and what you do.
We read it and reply
Everything that arrives gets read by a person. If it is right for the blog we will say so and tell you when it goes live. If it is not, we will tell you that too.
Questions we get asked
Do you pay for articles?
No. This is not a paid market. What a contributor gets is a byline, a short note about themselves at the end of the piece, and a well-made page that stays up.
How long before I hear back?
Allow about a week. We are a working maintenance service first and a blog second, so busy weeks slow us down. If a fortnight passes with no word, send a short nudge to the same address.
Will you edit what I send?
Yes, for clarity, headings, spelling and length. We tighten sentences and cut repetition. If a change alters your meaning rather than your wording, it goes back to you first.
Can I send photographs?
Please do, as long as they are your own. Around 1,200 pixels wide or more, and a line for each one saying what it shows. Photographs of the actual fault you are describing are worth far more than stock images.
I am a trade, not a writer. Is that a problem?
It is the opposite of a problem. Rough notes from someone who has spent twenty years on roofs are easier to turn into a good article than polished prose from someone who has not.
Can I write about a subject already covered on the blog?
Yes, if you are adding something. A different climate, a different building type, or a case where the usual advice turned out to be wrong are all good reasons to go over the same ground.
Send your draft
hello@berksawactivepropertycare.com
Put Write For Us in the subject line, tell us what the piece is about, and say a little about yourself. One person reads that inbox, and every email in it gets a reply.
Everything on this blog is general information about looking after property. It is not legal, financial or structural advice. Contributors write in their own words about their own experience, and a published article does not make its author part of Berksaw Active Property Care.