All the help you need to prepare, search, evaluate, bid, secure and get moved into your next home.
We are buying agents. We search for homes and seek to acquire them on behalf of our clients. As far as the law is concerned, we are estate agents – we just happen to act for buyers, not sellers. We buy properties between £500,000 and £50m. Some clients just want help looking for a new home, some want help to evaluate a property and to negotiate the best deal. Spending a six figure sum is something most people do on average every ten years.
We act for 40 – 50 clients a year, bid on a house every week and buy two or more a month. In 2022 we had £82m worth of exchanges and £102m of completions. Despite rocketing prices & endless ‘best & final offers’ our clients typically paid 4.3% less than the quoted asking price for the homes they bought although eight paid more – for a variety of reasons. Our biggest saving was £1.95m!
According to Rightmove sellers typically accepted around 5% (£11,000) less than their final asking price. Zoopla says that it’s just 3.86% and figures published by Hometrack suggest that an average buyer pays 97% of the asking price.
Over the past decade, on average our clients paid 11% (or £143,000) less!
Of course many people start off asking too much for their home and a third of sellers currently on the market have reduced their guide price at least once according to the website Zoopla.co.uk. Be it a £5.5m house in Notting Hill (which completed in March 2019 for less than the asking price and less than the seller paid in 2014!) or a £2.25m home outside Newbury (bought just after the ‘Brexit’ referendum for 10% less) our clients like to pay as little as possible. One third of what we buy is ‘off-market’, not on websites or in estate agents’ windows.
We are not the only buying agents and it’s more important that you have the right advisor than that it necessarily be us. For a brief period of time your buying agent will have a detailed and personal knowledge of your affairs so you must trust them and have confidence in what they are doing and they in you. We are confident that we are at least as good as most firms but are not arrogant enough to think that we can be everyone’s cup of tea. Our aim is that you have the right advisor for you even if that means you are represented by someone else. These are some of the best that we recommend you speak to.
A buying agent can;-
- Source off-market properties – those available but not advertised on websites or in agent’s windows.
- Advise on areas, compare and contrast different places.
- Research a street, village or town looking at crime, natural threats such as flooding and over-flights by planes.
- Assess relative value.
- Research the motivations of the sellers and look for pressure points like death, debt or divorce.
- Comment on yield and the potential for capital growth.
- Negotiate with the seller and their agent. (Not all selling agents are slippery but some certainly are!).
- Introduce the best mortgage brokers, accountants and wealth managers along with advisors, tradesmen & lawyers.
- Liaise with solicitors, valuers, surveyors, architects, builders and contractors.
- Help to make your next move the smoothest and most painless experience possible.
We look for properties in London and in the country. We review those that we find, provide objective advice on each and discretion for people who would rather not have their private business paraded in public. Estate agents are not brokers trying to mediate between two parties. They act for, and are paid by one party – the seller!
Buying agents are still estate agents in the eyes of the law and as such each must sign up to a redress scheme. Confusingly there are two, we were members of The Property Ombudsman for many years but this is the one that we are currently signed up to.
It’s important to stress that we are good but we’re not magicians. We can help shorten the process, help to ensure that you don’t buy the wrong thing and buy as aggressively as possible but we can’t dream up a property if one doesn’t exist. We can help to decide what might be worth compromising on and what isn’t.
The team at Pryor & Co. brought knowledge, patience, market contacts and – above all – good judgment to the buying process. They have demonstrable expertise; having them on the team (as it were) was invaluable. We were not only delighted by the outcome, but found the experience to be pleasurable. Many thanks to Richard and Henry.
We have just bought a house with Richard and Henry Pryor providing services as our buying agents. It was THE most pleasurable buying experience we’ve had. They are extremely knowledgeable on the market, highly emotionally intelligent and astute at guiding us through the buying process, have an encyclopaedic network of agents, surveyors, builders, architects, etc and maintain excellent and honest professional relationships with all of them.
The respect and revere with which they are held within the property sector reflected very positively on our experience as buyers. They were also tireless in scouring the market to find viable houses for a period of time that we felt went way longer than the fee we had paid (great value for money!) and were extremely honest about their views on the properties whilst at the same time being delicate with our sensibilities.
They never shy from going the extra mile and being as helpful as possible in every possible way. We 1,000% recommend working with Richard and Henry. In addition to all, they are really nice people and a pleasure to spend time with, viewing and discussing houses. Don’t hesitate to engage them. You won’t regret it!
I have worked with Rosie on a recent sale/purchase of one of our properties and the transaction was extremely smooth! It was an absolute delight to work with Pryor&Co and I surely hope our paths cross again soon!
We recently sold a property to clients of Richards. He made the whole process as smooth as possible and clearly gave his client sound, pragmatic advice. I look forward to the next sale we agree to clients of his.
Richard and Henry recently helped us purchase a property in the Cotswolds. We had never used a buying agent before but I don’t think we will ever buy a home without them again! Richard made the entire process so smooth and gave us invaluable insights in all the aspects we expected, like negotiating price, but also in many aspects we didn’t even consider. He liaised with all the stakeholders, keeping on top of all parties on our behalf, making it completely stress free for us. Highly recommend.