When an ultra-high-net-worth individual with a multi-million-pound budget begins their search for a new home, it usually begins with a high-end buying agent or broker.
The agent will seek to understand the client’s needs and, hopefully, provide options to make their client’s heart sing. For this service, they charge a monthly retainer, a percentage of the purchase price, or a share of the discount achieved on the asking price – or some combination of these.
The way buying agents and brokers actually earn their fees has changed over the years.
Much of the action still takes place ‘off market’, without being openly advertised, but where a buying agent would once have discussed their ‘searches’ with selling agents or brokers over the phone, this information is now more likely to be shared by email, text or on one of the many WhatsApp groups that have sprung up in recent years.
Some of these can have hundreds of members and be open to anyone who wants to join.
[See also: Can buyers of super-prime property remain anonymous?]
But herein lies a problem. According to one leading agent who speaks to Spear’s off the record, the proliferation of WhatsApp groups that now function as informal digital marketplaces has led to a ‘Wild West’ scenario that is not always in the client’s best interests.
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Once a message is sent to hundreds of people in a WhatsApp group, it can easily be forwarded to hundreds more. As a result, the privacy and discretion that clients might have hoped for can evaporate.
The situation also creates openings for opportunistic middlemen to insert themselves into a deal by taking the details of a search or off-market property and then presenting them to another party in hopes of being able to charge an introducer’s fee.
photographed for Spear’s
at The Peninsula London
/ Image: Andie Mackie
Such deals can be complicated, more costly and liable to breaking down. ‘These WhatsApp groups… it’s mayhem,’ says Becky Fatemi, the Sotheby’s agent recently named Spear’s Property Broker of the Year.
[See also: Steadier times to come for the prime central London property market?]
‘There is an element of losing control,’ she adds, noting the way in which properties are shared among people who are members of multiple groups.
So what can be done? A new proptech start-up founded by a former buying agent thinks it may have the answer.
‘There is a huge amount of very, very expensive property traded in London on a yearly basis,’ says Caspar Harvard-Walls, an alumnus of buying agency Black Brick. ‘The way the information around that property is handled is really important… In five or ten years’ time [the industry] won’t be distributing retained searches and property details via text message, WhatsApp and things like that. The world will move on and hopefully we’ll play a part in making it more efficient and secure.’
[See also: ‘Once-in-a-decade’ apartment at The Glebe Chelsea comes to market at £40 million]
Oskar
To do this, Harvard-Walls and his partners have created Oskar, a platform for buying agents and brokers that only admits users once they have been vetted. Once on the platform, buying agents can send out notifications of searches for clients, stipulating their requirements.
Importantly, the information is not accessible to all users of the platform; it can be targeted and limited according to any criteria that the buying agent and their client deem significant.
The model is similar in some respects to Spotlight, a platform used widely in the film and television industry by casting agents and actors. A former CEO of Spotlight, Ben Seal, is part of Oskar’s founding team.
[See also: Creative Capitalism: The project that lured entrepreneur Chris Burch to the City]
Since launching in April 2024, Oskar has attracted 250 members, including agents from all the leading and largest firms operating in London. It notched up its first sale in October and has some £1 billion of rolling property searches and listings, with some for properties of over £25 million.
‘Oskar gives control to the agents,’ says Harvard-Walls. It is free to use for members, and there is no plan to try to take a percentage or a fee for deals done through the platform.
‘I don’t think we’d get the kind of scale that we want [if we did that],’ says Harvard-Walls.
‘Where I see us being able to monetise is by putting together this group of the best agents in London. And we’ve got lots of ideas around how to do that.’
This feature first appeared in Spear’s Magazine Issue 94. Click here to subscribe
