30 years of Garrington: Three decades on the buyer’s side

On Thursday 15th October, guests filled The Lansdowne Club in Mayfair to mark 30 years of Garrington, with an internationally renowned pianist playing through the evening and a glass of something sparkling in most hands.

The purpose of the evening was a simple one: to thank the people and partnerships that have supported the firm over three decades.

Anniversaries invite retrospection, and the history is worth telling. But the idea that brought everyone into the room is older than the firm and simpler than any history. In 1996, when Garrington began, one side of the table in almost every property transaction in Britain was empty. The seller had an agent. The buyer had no one.

The buyer’s side of the table

It is easy to forget how a home was bought thirty years ago. There was no Rightmove, which did not launch until 2000, and no Google, which arrived in 1998. The property pages came out on a Thursday, agents kept mailing lists, and anyone serious about finding a house spent Saturdays driving between viewings arranged by telephone.

Every seller had a professional whose job was to secure the best price. Buyers, committing more money than at any other point in their lives, negotiated against that professional on their own.

Founded in 1996 by Phil Spencer, some time before Location, Location, Location made him a familiar face, Garrington was built on a single guiding principle: that a buyer deserves the same professional representation which a seller has always had. At the time it was an exception, since few people had heard of a buying agent and fewer still had used one.

In December 2008, Jonathan Hopper led a management buyout, and the firm set about building something broader. It was not the easiest moment to be ambitious about property, but the thinking was evolution rather than reinvention.

The principle was sound; the task was to make it available to more buyers in more places. The East and the North were already established, Nicholas Finn joined in 2010 to rebuild the London team, and the network has grown region by region since, so that the areas we cover today span England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland.

What a buying agent does now

The question we are asked most often, three decades on, is still the simplest one: what does a buying agent actually do? The answer has changed more than the job title suggests. In 1996 the scarce resource was information. Knowing which properties were for sale, and getting through the door before anyone else, was most of the work.

Today every listing is visible to anyone with a smartphone, and the value of a UK buying agent lies in judgement rather than access to the portals:

Knowing what a listing leaves out, which properties will never reach the open market, what a street is worth rather than what it is asking, and how to negotiate when the other side of the table has done this hundreds of times.

In practice that means sourcing, including off-market property sold quietly through local relationships and professional networks, together with negotiation on the buyer’s behalf, due diligence on the property and the terms, and the local knowledge of regional partners who live and work in the areas they cover.

Around that core the firm has grown in ways nobody in 1996 predicted, with Garrington Asset Management looking after properties and portfolios once a purchase is complete, and the Private Office and advisory work supporting clients whose requirements extend beyond a single search. Alongside the client work, our annual Best Places to Live research and the monthly market review provide valuable insights for anyone considering a move, whether or not they become a client.

The next chapter is already under way. We call it Artful Intelligence: the combination of human expertise with advances in AI that are changing how property information is gathered and read. The tools will go on changing; the judgement about what matters to a particular buyer in a particular place does not.

The evening

Much of that history was in the room on Thursday. Long-standing supporters stood with introducers and professional advisers who have worked alongside us for much of the past thirty years, while members of the press joined former clients, some of whom we first met decades ago. The current team came from across the UK, with regional partners from every region, Scotland and Northern Ireland included, united in one room.

The formal part of the night was deliberately kept short, in keeping with a celebratory reception. The film made to mark the anniversary, 30 Years. One Side., was shown for the first time, and was followed by a video message from Phil Spencer on the thirty years since he founded the firm. Master of ceremonies Bryn Lucas then put questions to Jonathan and Nicholas about those years and what the firm has become, before all those in the room joined in a toast to the next thirty years.

The ballroom was a fitting place to show the ‘30 Years. One Side.‘ film.

Robert Adam planned it as a library, Robert Smirke completed it as a sculpture gallery in 1819, and the club turned it into a ballroom in 1935, so the room has evolved at least as often as the business it was hosting. The rest of the house has a similar record, and there was a certain synergy in a property buying firm marking thirty years in a building whose history is largely one of successful transactions.

The next 30 years of Garrington

Our own history is simpler to tell. What we do has grown; why we do it has not. The services are broader, the regions more numerous, the technology unrecognisable from 1996, but the reason for being on the buyer’s side of the table is the same as it was when that side was empty.

So our thanks go to the people and partnerships who have filled it with us: clients, introducers, colleagues past and present, and everyone who joined us in Mayfair. Thirty years of Garrington is their story as much as ours. For anyone who would like to know the people behind the firm, Jonathan and the wider team are introduced on our website.