About

I sold other people's inventory for six years before starting this firm, and the thing that finally decided it was a viewing in a tower I had never been inside. The brochure said five minutes to the beach. It did not say which five minutes, or that the low floors looked into the podium car park, or that the building had two service-charge histories depending on which block you bought into. I could have said none of that and still closed. I said it, and the buyer bought next door.

Our area guides are written the same way. They say where the exits queue at peak, which communities are still being built around, and where the thing that decides whether you are happy is the specific building rather than the area's reputation. Some of that costs us the listing. Owners occasionally read the guide to their own community and take the instruction elsewhere.

We are not the largest firm in this market and have not tried to be. We work the communities we know well enough to be useful in, and when an enquiry falls outside them we say so rather than take it and learn on someone else's money. A valuation from us is a number we will take apart line by line — floor area, floor level, what has actually transacted in the building this year — and we would rather have the argument about the arithmetic before the listing goes live than after it has sat unsold for a season.

We would rather lose a transaction than place someone badly. That is a commercial position as much as a principle: a buyer who works out in year two what the building is really like is a client we have also lost for the resale, the letting and the next purchase.