Originally published September 2017.
This November I clock up 50 years as an estate agent – and what have I learnt or gained from this experience?
Well, I have tried alternative business options over the last five decades but still ended up selling second hand houses for a living, and have I enjoyed it? On reflection, yes, made many good friends and some bad ones (!) plus experiencing human frailties by the bucket load.
It all started in 1967 when I worked for a local newspaper, the Harlow Citizen, in Essex. Monday to Friday job, cricket and/or football every Saturday and Sunday. A lovely job, then I popped into a recruitment agency to collect copy for their next advert, and I only asked, “What’s a negotiator then?”
Forty-eight hours later, I am attending an interview for a job I know nothing about or am even interested in. Whoever heard of estate agents anyway in the late 1960s?
The job interview was with Arbon & Upton, a major player in those days, with eight offices up and down the A10 and A11 on the Herts/Essex borders. I met up with Paul Arbon, also a founder of the National Association of Estate Agents. What a gentleman, no wonder his staff ‘loved him’. He was a perfect man. I immediately wanted to work for him, whatever the job was!
I didn’t get a ring or letter back for a couple of weeks so I thought, I’ll chase them up, left a message and as a result I was offered another interview in the Bishop’s Stortford branch with their manager, Stan Bennett.
Another lovely person. I was hooked and got the job as a trainee negotiator, still wasn’t sure what that meant but I had to pack up football and cricket on Saturdays, that was for sure. Then, to my shock and horror, they decided to open Sundays as well! Winter games out the window.
Stan had three young children, so for a packet of 25 Peter Stuyvesant I learnt all about babysitting. “It’s a career move,” I tried to convince my girlfriend!
I spent two very happy years with A&U until tragically, Mr Arbon died in a car crash somewhere in southern France and the agency was never the same again. At the time they had a great crop of young ‘lunatic’ negotiators such as Malcolm Scott, Mike Nicholas, Rodney Short, Bernie Almond, and the Norris brothers. All crazy. I was the kid in the firm so I stood back in amazement and watched how they all enjoyed life and ‘the firm’. Everyone, from the youngest to the seniors and oldest, was good friends.
So, time to move on and join the local whiz kids of the industry, an agency known as ‘Adrians’ in Bishop’s Stortford, two young twenty-somethings both called, yep, Adrian, who appealed to me with their flash E Type and TR4s – that is the agency for me! I enjoyed five years of learning how to use the ‘curve ball’. It was an education and well worth every moment of my stay.
At the time, my closest agency friend was Mike Miller who I first met at A&U and who later joined Adrians when they opened up in Chelmsford. We both got on well – big brother little brother syndrome (I was the little one!) – and eventually after talking about it ‘for ever’ we decided to do our own thing and opened up our own estate agency in Epping, Essex in August 1974.
Married only three years previously and with an 18 month old daughter, it was not the brightest idea to start up (also the economy was not in a very good state), but we jumped in with both feet and managed to float through the difficult times and build a solid agency adding the risk of expanding into Harlow which at the time was a ‘new town’ with very little private housing. But the Thatcher government changed all that with the introduction of the ‘right to buy’ for council tenants – changing Harlow, almost overnight, from the council rental capital of East Anglia to a potential buzzing housing market and thankfully we were there at the very beginning and still so, some 40 years later.
Mike and I had a good 10 years or so together but time was running out on on us both and we decided to go our separate ways. He wanted to be a builder, I didn’t want to get my hands dirty!
I was joined as a new business partner by Barbara Brooker who was working for me at the time. She bought herself into the company by buying a new Minolta photocopier.
So, reinvented again in the booming 80s then a certain banking institution knocked on our door just as the market was showing signs of a downturn. Although they thought otherwise!
I could not believe my ears with their confidence in the industry and the boom times to come, even after the Chancellor at the time announced tax relief (in the March statement – 1988, do you remember?) for unmarried couples to be abolished the following August so the market went even more potty for the next six months.
Figures were crazy, we were all over performing in a false marketplace but the bankers thought otherwise so we took the money and chucked the keys over the desk pretty quickly.
A bit of luck though: a mate of mine at the time, who had recently sold his agency to a car dealership (!!) slipped into the agreement for a ‘first refusal’ buyback, so I decided to do the same. “Why?” said the banker. “Well, you never know, do you?” was my instant reply. “But,” said the banker, “you have a new career for life with us!”
My modest business forecast of about a 15% drop in revenue turned out better than the banker’s modest and very optimistic 5% increase for the coming year. Coupled with their redistribution of staff ‘from round pegs to square holes’ principle meant we just about returned a 50% drop in revenue!
A telephone call came through from head office, “So-and-so from somewhere up high wants to see you urgently!”. Fine, nothing else to do, no cricket at Lords to sneak off to watch so might as well hang around for the big man to land in my office.
An interesting conversation developed – the big man wanted me to buy back the agency! “You’re bloody kidding,” was my reply. “You said I had a job for life! And besides, I love working for you guys!”
After some real hard arm twisting Barbara and I relented (in about five minutes) but I pointed out the business was worthless thanks to the bank’s dreadful management skills and hopeless business knowledge of our ‘cottage industry’ which their MD described as “a bunch of corner shop entrepreneurs that trade in a world I have no idea existed”! When I pointed this out I felt a sharp kick on my leg from the lady sitting next to me!
Anyway, 11 months, three weeks and 11 hours later we were ‘out of the door’. In fact it was our door once more and in less than twelve months! Freedom and fresh air, so to speak.
January 1990 marked phase three of my career, with my name over the door for the first time – with great pleasure shown by my parents who turned out to be the most embarrassing PR agency I ever knew!
Another three decades and still going strong, well sort of. Barbara’s son Paul is now our MD, my son James works alongside him and Barbara’s other son Giles heads up our rental and management agency next door. And my daughter Samantha, annoyed she was not offered a job ‘in the family business’, sold up and moved to the USA with my two grandsons! Well in truth her husband had a job relocation but Sam’s story is more fun.
We have been trading from our Georgian building, Gothic House, in the centre of Old Harlow since 1978 and the name style has changed five times (if you include our short rein with ‘the bankers’ who switched our ID three times inside a year to different name styles and divisions) yet Barbara and I have only moved a few yards in all of that time, well, upstairs.
So, what is the future for me and us? Carry on as normal I guess. Paul in his wisdom suggested I and Barbara should go part time, fine in the summer, not so sure what to do in the winter so a split job role. If I’m not playing golf or watching cricket then I’m in Gothic House chatting to past and present friends and clients, sales chasing and boring the pants off my colleagues about ‘in my time when TV was black and white’ etc.
A couple of months ago Mike Miller called in as we had to visit a very sick former business friend, he sat down with his walking stick to one side and slowly surveyed the scene and then said, “Do you remember…”. Off we went for half an hour boring everyone in sight!
Conclusion: after 50 years in this business, it hasn’t changed a single bit. OK, computers have helped out a lot but there is still a place for the ‘hot box’ of index cards, face to face conversations and old style charm.
Good bits being no more handwriting thousands of envelopes and sticking stamps on, folding and stuffing ‘millions’ of property details – that is a big plus. No need for secretaries, we do our own correspondence.
Progress chasers are now fashionable and I do agree that innovation works well providing agents can lose their egos and talk to each other on a level playing field.
Conveyancers (used to be legal clerks) are worse now than in the 1970s, too cheap and not much customer care. I still moan a lot about them and bet they are still moaning about me. There is still a massive divide between those who are either conveyancing or selling yet we are meant to be on the same side. It is hopeless and will continue to be so until we all work as a unit, combining both industries as they do in Scotland and other enlightened marketplaces such as in the States and Australia.
The biggest tragedy during my time in our industry was the loss of the Home Information Packs. What a massive error of judgement to cancel that scheme, would have speeded up the whole system. In fact it’s slower now than 50 years ago. Twenty-eight day exchange was the norm, now you’re lucky if the draft contract turns up in that time – and searches, another soap box issue of mine…
The newest phase must be online estate agencies. Interesting recent media articles and experiences on this matter include more and more dissatisfied sellers coming back to us saying “I have wasted almost £1000 and got nothing back in return”. No surprise there. There was a good article recently on www.getagent.co.uk – interesting view and summary on this subject.
Will online survive? I think so but it will have to up its game as far as post-sale procedure is concerned.
The future? Sooner or later, a forward-thinking agent and similar-minded lawyer will get together, move out of the high street, find a former ‘Little Chef’ building on the outskirts of town and open a 24/7 property centre with everything included within the same building including carpet suppliers, gas and electric engineers all available as well. Also, compulsory MOTs for homes. No MOT certificate, no sale: might replace the sadly lost HIPs, criminal losing that scheme.
To those about to or who have just joined the industry, enjoy! It’s good fun, most of the time.
