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 30 – 40 clients a year. Despite rocketing prices & endless ‘best & final offers’ our clients typically paid 5% less than the quoted asking price for the homes they bought although some pay more – for a variety of reasons. Our biggest saving last year was 11% of the asking price.
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 £100,000) less!
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.
Sometimes the best advice we give is “don’t!”. Having seen hundreds of homes over the years we can often spot a problem that would be easy to overlook.
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.
From start to finish, Henry has been amazing. He plays the roles of advisor, scheduler, negotiator, counselor (and occasionally comic) seamlessly and with such ease. His expertise has proven itself to be invaluable and we’re confident we wouldn’t have ended up with the home we have without his help. Working with Henry was the best decision we made in our search.
I met Henry a short while ago when he successfully negotiated on behalf of his clients who were hoping to buy in SW London. When positioning an offer on his client’s behalf, Henry’s diligence, preparation and sense of urgency was excellent, which made it easy and straightforward to negotiate with the sellers. With an offer presented with precision and a well prepared buyer ready to transact, the resulting deal was completely hassle free and quick moving for all involved. Henry – I look forward to working with you again soon!
It took us 2 years in all to find our family home and throughout this period Henry was invaluable counsel in explaining that we need not rush or settle for second best at inflated prices. These wise words not only saved us from making a costly mistake but calmed us through the intermittent episodes of panic that come when you think you’ll never find a home.
Once we found the one, where we’ve been for 6 months now, Henry really came into his own in sheltering us from the often fraught negotiations and the ‘will this/won’t this happen’ drama that invariably comes with many property transactions.
A perfect home purchase made easy – a big thank you from us all!
Although we were quite familiar with the London property market, having owned property there previously, we were lucky enough to be introduced to Henry by friends who had used his services. He is blunt, straightforward and very knowledgeable. At the outset he was helpful in getting us to clarify and prioritize our wish list and budget. He has an in depth knowledge of the market, and the agents operating within it. During the search Henry was extremely helpful in getting us access to all the properties that met our criteria. Overall we would highly recommend using him as an essential resource if purchasing a property in London. He not only makes the process easier and actually enjoyable, but also helps cut through so much of the fluff and fantasy that surrounds the process.
I cannot recommend Henry highly enough. He helped us find our next beautiful home despite a tricky market. He listened, he guided, gave great advice all the way and kept us focused. Henry never forgot the ‘must have’ list of things we’d given him……not least ‘room for table tennis’! He always gave constructive feedback on the properties we viewed. Henry is an absolute authority on the housing market, and we felt very safe in his hands. He was always available to talk things through day or night in any time zone! He knows the agents and he knows how to negotiate a great deal. He drove the purchase through smoothly, dealing with solicitors, surveyors and other inspectors. Nothing was ever a problem. He is clearly a well respected man in his field, and on top of all that, fun to be around. I don’t know how anyone can buy a house without him. Thank you Henry.
Henry has just helped us with an 8 month journey from North London to Godalming in Surrey. Its easy to be sceptical but his dispassionate advice, insight and stewardship have been invaluable to us during this process.
We have been very pleased with his services – an end to end approach with an ‘always on call’ mentality (within reason). He helped us with everything from honing in on potential areas outside the M25 through to managing estate agents and closing the deal.
Would recommend without hesitation – many thanks Henry.
Henry was recommended to me and I recently used his Bespoke service to purchase investment property. As a novice in the property business, I did not want to dive in without doing my research. Henry was extremely patient with me and over a few months, spent hours on the phone sharing his knowledge and expertise, whilst providing guidance and relevant information which enabled me to proceed, without pushing any specific agenda on me. Henry assisted me every step of the way. He identified interesting properties to view, arranged a viewing schedule for me and then helped to negotiate and then close the deal as well as chasing up solicitor’s right up until completion.
We would have been completely lost without Henry’s advice. He gently but quickly dispelled our myths about the London market. Thank goodness we listened to him. Not only did he find the right flat for us ,he smoothed the way on so many fronts. His introductions to lawyers, surveyors and mortgage brokers made life easier. They have all proved to be reliable and helpful. He got a price we would have shied away from. And very importantly he made the whole process such fun. We have recommended him to a number of our friends and contacts.
Henry really does all the things he lists with bullet points above, and I can’t imagine there are many buyers who wouldn’t benefit from at least a few of them. But he can also provide enthusiasm when you can’t supply much of your own; I needed that at the beginning, when my only requirement was to be in London, and didn’t know how to narrow my focus without missing things that would suit me. And he never complained about regular changes to requirements and budget, or gave the sense that he thought I’d taken enough of his time. I think you’d be nuts not to use a buying agent – at the very least, it cuts the risk of serious error – and Henry is both very good at his job, and a pleasure to have on/at your side.
We had been looking for a property for a while and being mostly based oversees it was proving a challenge. Earlier this year, we were fortunate enough to be introduced to Henry and engaged him almost immediately and what a fantastic experience and happy to say a successful result. Henry’s deep knowledge of the London property market was invaluable as we explored various locations. His straight talking and great humour made what had been an exhausting experience (pre-Henry) into a great experience. Henry handled everything from finding suitable properties, talking to agents, recommending great solicitors, surveyors, builders and more. Henry seem to have the answer to pretty much everything that occurred in the process from start to finish, which made our lives and the experience so much easier and quicker.
We wouldn’t hesitate to recommend Henry to anyone considering a property purchase and indeed would strongly advise it – he is worth every pound of his fee!