Teresa Brewer, co-founder, Sales; Paul Cosgrove, Director; Simon Gresswell, co-founder, Lettings.

 

Thirty years ago, two property industry types working in West London decided they could start-up an estate agency that would ‘do it better’ than the incumbents in and around Brook Green. And so Finlay Brewer was born.

The Neg sat down to talk to the recently-rebranded agency’s senior team as they celebrate its milestone, which has been no mean feat given the rising competition on their patch in such a sought-after area of the Capital. Here co-founder Simon Gresswell (lettings), co-founder Teresa Brewer (sales) and fellow director Paul Cosgrove reveal some of the secrets to their success.

How did Finlay Brewer come about?

Simon I was a developer in the area and the local agents were pretty scary people – including Teresa who I met at a property viewing when she was working for a local estate agency!

We subsequently went to a property auction together and while having a coffee there decided to have a go at starting our own agency rather than mucking around working for someone else.

We have one employee, who is 86. She comes in once a week.

I had been screwed over by a couple of agents in the past when I was buying and selling stuff, so I thought we’d do well if we could just do it a little better than everyone else – which is the mantra we’ve stuck to ever since, albeit we believe our service is now a lot better than the competition.

How have you all rubbed along together?

Simon A huge amount of tolerance, obviously! But at the end of the day, it’s all about making money and we enjoy the job and working together, even though we’re all three very different people. The job can be absolute hell, but it can also be the most tremendous fun.

Teresa I think it might have been different if Simon had been doing sales and Simon had been doing management; we’d have gone bust very quickly. I’d have told all the tenants where to go, and Simon would still be trying to sell his first home.

Where does ‘Finlay Brewer’ come from?

Simon The name comes from my middle name and Teresa’s surname.

Where did you start out?

Simon We hired a serviced office off the high street for about two years and then in 1993 we noticed that a local agency was struggling – their negs used to play ball games in the road opposite, so we approached them to acquire their premises. At the time the recession playing out then meant the market was very, very slow and you had to fight for every deal. We were the new kids of the block so we fought that little bit harder – and our overheads were relatively low because there was just the two of us.

Why have you stuck to West London?

Simon We all live in West London so we’re perfectly happy with the size of the territory we cover. We expanded the business a bit in 2013 but otherwise, we believe it’s better to have a great team working together in one office than have everything spread over a city. But technology has helped – we can cover an area now that would have required two offices in the past. For now, that’s working very well.

Paul We’ve become specialists in our core areas and we don’t want to dilute that – and in London a property that you need to visit that’s two miles away can take 40 minutes to reach in London’s traffic – so if you have ten viewings, that’s a lot of time spent in your car.

Simon It’s all about local knowledge – we know exactly where you’ll get a bigger garden that’s not too far from a tube, for example, something a greenhorn corporate neg with a huge patch is unlikely to know. Each market around here is slightly different but with the core type of client profile.

How has the client profile changed over the years?

Paul We’re getting a lot more buyers and renters from Kensington and Chelsea looking for more space; when I joined the business in 1998 around 40 per cent of our home-movers were from there, whereas now it’s 80 per cent.

Simon Back then you had to explain to anyone coming down from Notting Hill, Holland Park or Kensington what Brook Green was all about – and that it wasn’t the crime hotspot they considered it to be.

But the people we deal with now, compared to then, hasn’t changed much – perhaps a bit younger. But the need to move to a house and put their children into a decent school is the main driver.

Teresa Finding a home that’s walking distance from their desired school is a must for many people moving here.

Paul This area probably has the highest density of excellent private and government-funded schools than any other patch of London.

Have you been swamped by the foreign buyers that are talked about so much in London?

Paul No, our client base is primarily English – followed by Europeans and then it used to be followed by the Americans, but now the Chinese have now replaced them.

Teresa The Chinese used to only buy brand new but now they’ll consider buying older homes and do them up. A younger generation of Chinese are arriving with different tastes. They can be funny too – often they won’t buy a property with the number four in its address, and one with eight in it will be jumped on.

Would you ever consider ‘going hybrid’ like other agencies?

Simon What’s hybrid? I think we’re all hybrid agents these days We all use technology and the internet to do our jobs.

But we were one of the first agents to sell properties using online listings via FindaProperty and, during the late 1990s (before Rightmove), we sold a property to a Canadian who had looked at it first online and then flew over to snap it up.

Our industry uses technology all the time and if you don’t, you’re lost really. I think the biggest transformation has been in property management – when we set out it was all done on paper, now we use Fixflo.

We’ve tried a few of the ‘new wonder’ tech platforms and too many of them are trying to take the human out of the estate agency game. So, although they’re trying to agencies save money, the front end has to be human – it’s the strength of our industry.

And it’s our strength too; while the big corporates around here have high staff turnover, we’re still here thirty years later. The grey hairs can be very useful because it shows we’ve got longevity here.

How did you survive the pandemic?

Simon We were very aggressive. We were fully closed for about four days until we realised there were 15 sales transactions going through from under offer, so we concentrated on spending the next three months getting those through. Finlay Brewer only lost one of them, which helped the cashflow situation.

It was the same for lettings; we had a lot of agreed tenancies that needed progressing. The numbers slowed down dramatically, but we managed to keep the team going, with just a few furloughed for around six weeks. We’re still pretty much altogether bar one person who retired early due to the pandemic we’re 12 people on the books at the moment.

We have one employee who is 86 – she comes in once a week to do some work for us.

Where is the property industry going in London?

Simon The biggest shift is the growing number of ‘independent’ or self-employed agents who now work under the various umbrella brand names.

It’s a US-style of agency that’s growing fast but it means competition is really ramping up, because you don’t need a branch to become an established operator any more. But we’re lucky because we have a strong brand, track record and ethos to give us the edge in this kind of evolving market.