In the fourth chapter of his professional memoirs, a Francophile continues his tales of Parisian real estate – and tells how comedy cabaret led to his big career break.
In my years at Hampton’s in Paris between 1983 and 1987 the markets were improving and we had enough business to sustain us, but only just. We were not big enough and not professional enough to develop a broad-based international real estate advisory business. The bosses, Llewellyn and Marsaleix, were busy trying to advise on major, opportunistic deals but there seemed to be no overall strategy. The rest of us on the shop floor were just scrambling around for business wherever we could find it.
I concentrated on English-speaking international ‘clients’, as the French called them, but they weren’t really clients at all in the British sense. There was Lotus (whose lawyer was a certain Christine Lagarde), Network Systems, Vorwerk and Pink Soda, to name but a few, companies that simply happened to contact us on a one-off basis looking for office or retail space. We hardly ever developed a long-term relationship with any of them. We were operating like salesmen rather than chartered surveyors.
The other problem was the commission arrangement. We were remunerated partly according to the amount of commission we brought in and partly according to the overall success of the team. This meant that it was more lucrative for one of us to do a letting quietly and quickly, splitting fees with a third-party agent, rather than bring the new instruction into the office and risk letting a colleague find the tenant. This was not good for the business. In the end it was the commission arrangements that finished off the company, but I shall come back to that.
In the meantime I gained much experience of negotiating deals and securing commissions but precious little real estate knowledge. I got to know the West End and business districts of Paris like the back of my hand, disproving my fear when I first arrived in the city that such familiarity would be quite impossible.
Some amusing instructions came my way: a request to carry out a structural survey of Laura Ashley’s chateau near Lille was totally beyond my level of competence, but I had the presence of mind to take the instruction and sub it out to a friend who was a structural engineer, thus gaining a day out visiting a beautiful castle with no report to write but still half the fee.
On another occasion we were contacted on a Friday afternoon by a desperate UK property developer. He wanted a valuation done by Monday for his bank on a leisure development he was trying to finance near Quimper, in Brittany. Without the loan his scheme was dead. The timescale was virtually impossible, so I surmised he had tried the larger firms and got nowhere before finally trying us.
Llewellyn asked me what I thought. I suggested I could offer to go to Quimper over the weekend if the client paid us fees and costs in advance and accepted that we could not guarantee being able to provide him with the type and level of formal valuation he was looking for. The client must have been desperate, because he agreed and by 6pm we had the money and I had my plane ticket for Quimper. Upon landing at its tiny airport, I was met by the client’s charming assistant, Elly, who gave the impression she had been told to do everything in her power to get me to do a rip-roaring report and if that meant going above and beyond the call of duty then so be it.
After less than an hour on site, a few basic questions and a few hesitant answers, it became apparent that nothing as trivial as planning permission had been applied for
We drove to the site. Either side of the entrance were freshly cut tree stumps. Acres of them, hectares even. Entire forests had been cleared. As we drove in, I noticed a number of dwellings under construction. After less than an hour on site, a few basic questions and a few hesitant answers, it became apparent that nothing as trivial as planning permission had been applied for, let alone obtained, for any of this building work. I finished the inspection and checked into the hotel. I already knew that the planning deficiencies meant I could not produce a valuation report. However, Elly had invited me to dinner and was surely going to flaunt her undoubted charms: what should I do? Well, we had a lovely evening and I behaved like a true gentleman. I have regretted it ever since.
The Hampton’s adventure, which had been my first taste of French working life, would soon come to an end. The two bosses argued and fell out over a large commission that had allegedly been paid abroad to one team member so he could avoid sharing it with the rest of us. This caused some considerable disquiet. I went to work briefly for Llewellyn when he moved across to run the commercial department at Féau, a reputable old French agency, specialising in high-end residential, and who had bought Hampton and Sons in early 1987. However, I quickly tired of this crusty old agency populated by crusty old agents, none of whom wanted to share anything with a young English upstart. Then one day I received a call that would change my life.
A bit of background: while a student I had discovered a passion for the theatre. At the University of St Andrews I had enjoyed acting in, directing and producing a variety of plays and revues, some in French and some in English. It was all great fun and helped me learn how to overcome a fear of standing up in front of crowds. I realised I could actually make people laugh, sometimes even on purpose. In the few years since arriving in Paris I had joined together with a group of pals to produce an annual cabaret, which we performed at New Year at the (very British) Standard Athletic Club in front of an inebriated audience.
Well, in the winter of 1987 the RICS French Group were organising a Christmas dinner and from somewhere came the idea that I might produce a little cabaret for them. I took a sketch that Tim Brooke-Taylor had sent me while at St Andrews and rewrote it to be relevant to the RICS. Next came a rewrite of Benny Hill’s Ernie the Milkman to pay homage to a legend of French real estate, Liam Smith. A few brave souls joined me on stage after the fromage had been downed and we let rip. It all went down a storm, which underlined the fact that you should always play comedy to an audience that has been copiously drinking. The evening concluded and I thought no more of it.
Then a few days later came a call from John Sanders, a well-liked, avuncular figure, who had been in Paris since the seventies and had even worked for Hamptons before me, although I had never met him. “Hello, Oliver,” he said in his elegant tones. “I must congratulate you.” “Hello, John,” I replied, “er… for what exactly?” “Why, your Christmas show of course. It was terrific. It got me thinking. Here at Ciprim we’re looking for somebody to take over from me in a few months’ time when I go off to open our Madrid office. After seeing your show, I’m guessing you could be mad enough to work for us.”
All I knew was that Ciprim was a small, Paris-based commercial property development company, run by Brits, with an excellent reputation for being dynamic, incisive and doing brilliant deals. I agreed to meet him to discuss matters further. I had naively assumed John was the big boss, but it only took a few minutes into the meeting with ‘a colleague’ to realise who really ran the show. Thanks to a few verses of Liam the Milkman, I was about to join up with one of the best real estate minds in the entire universe: Miles d’Arcy Irvine.
