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Trevor Abrahmsohn has sold houses to everyone from Ringo Starr to Saudi princes. Now he is preparing for the biggest deal of his life. Christopher Middleton takes a trip down Billionaire’s Row to learn the secrets of selling to the super-rich.
Many an estate agent has the odd anecdote about a sneaky gazumping or conveyancing dispute. Few have stories as jaw-dropping as Trevor Abrahmsohn’s tale of two buyers who couldn’t meet in the middle.
“A developer was selling two apartments for £20 million, but he and the buyer could not agree on the exact price,” Trevor explains.
“The buyer had a plane to catch, and was in a hurry. So I asked them to spin a coin for a million pounds. They spun. The developer lost, but the deal went through.”
Hardly your average property deal, but then Trevor is not your average estate agent.
For 38 years, he has been selling homes in Bishops Avenue. In this well-groomed neck of the north London woods, houses are the size of supertankers, and pillared like a parliament building.
His first sale was for £2 million, back in the Seventies, but his newest property, Heath Hall, is on the market for £100 million. The news that Britain is emerging from economic downturn is old hat here. At no point in the last four years have the winds of recession blown down this particular Billionaire’s Row.
“This area has always been a honeypot to which the rich bees fly,” says Trevor, as we pass by yet another “For Sale” sign bearing his company’s name (Glentree International). “Every time over the past four decades that a country has undergone a political upheaval, or gets a sudden influx of petrodollars, yet more bees have flown here.”
The swarming effect began in the Sixties, when wealthy Greeks fled to Britain following the military takeover in their country. Next, the OPEC oil price rise brought a tide of the newly wealthy. Then Middle Eastern potentates, followed by well-to-do Iranians escaping the Ayatollah Khomenei regime, were joined by prosperous Nigerian oil barons, Russian oligarchs and, more recently, freshly minted Chinese billionaires.
And the chances are that when buying their bespoke Bishops Avenue mansion, they took their business to Trevor Abrahmsohn. In the course of his career, he has sold 129 houses in Bishops Avenue and 119 in next-door Winnington Road, some of them three or four times. His list of clients includes everyone from steel magnate Lakshmi Mittal to Polly Peck executive Asil Nadir, as well as the royal families of Brunei and Saudi Arabia, and any number of high-profile foreign politicians. In 2008 he sold a £50 million mansion to the president of Kazakhstan. Not to mention high-profile Britons, such as Ringo Starr, Joan Collins and Formula One chief Bernie Ecclestone.
“We sell 98 per cent of the properties that come on the market in Bishops Avenue,” says Trevor, as he pilots his tiny Smart car in between the muddy-wheeled construction lorries that trundle up and down the road. Buyers regularly demolish the house they have bought and build a new one in its place.
“Buyers are drawn to the road by a mixture of things. Living here is a statement of wealth. Second, there aren’t many world-class cities where you can buy a house with up to seven acres of grounds.
“In some cases, we have sold to two or three generations of the same family.”
It is thanks to this continuity that Trevor has such a rich fund of stories regarding the road’s past and present occupants.
“That’s Byron House, where the industrialist Rolf Schild lived. You might remember, he and his family were kidnapped in 1980 by Sardinian bandits who mistakenly thought they were Rothschilds.
“Those four houses over there all belong to the Brunei royal family. The properties look similar, but one of them is actually an indoor badminton court.”
“That house used to belong to the deputy prime minister of Oman, who, unfortunately, was assassinated. Behind those gates is where the singer Gracie Fields used to live.”
And what about the £100 million property itself?
“Heath Hall was built in 1910 for William Lyle, of the Tate and Lyle sugar family,” Trevor explains. “It was bought by the Bank of China, who used it to house 50 of their employees. Then it was bought from them by a man called Andreas Panayiotou, who spent seven years restoring it.
“There are 14 en-suite bedrooms, a home cinema and an indoor swimming pool. The whole building is in the Arts and Crafts style. Hence the asking price.”
Of which Trevor’s firm can expect to take three per cent in commission fees, once a sale is agreed. But it isn’t just a question of putting an advertisement in the local paper and waiting for offers to flood in.
“I help work out what’s the best use for the site, how to go about getting planning permission, how creditworthy the potential buyers are and how serious they are about buying,” he explains. “On top of which, 50 per cent of the houses we sell in this area are on the 'grey’ market. This means the owners prefer to sell privately.”
Crucial to any sale, then, is Trevor’s Rolodex, containing the contact details of, as he puts it, “huge numbers of the richest people in the world”. Although he himself rarely stirs from Hampstead, he has agents overseas who, within two hours, can get word out to the wealthy about a Bishops Avenue house going on the market.
Sometimes, though, it pays not to tap up the tycoons direct, but to approach their chauffeur or housekeeper.
“I have done a lot of deals through talking to drivers,” says Trevor. “Most drivers are with their boss, or principal, on and off duty. So they get an objective impression of how the man is thinking. By contrast, many of the principal’s immediate entourage and personal assistants tend to be more sycophantic.”
Which is why Trevor presents himself not as a toadie, but as a straight talker. He hasn’t forgotten how he started in the business, renting a one-roomed upstairs bedsit seven days at a time, and winning clients by what he did, rather than how big he talked.
To this end, he still dresses more like a bank clerk than a big shot, as well as driving the smallest possible car into which he can cram both himself and his Jackanory-sized property brochures. “I charge prospective buyers £2,000 per brochure. I want it to sting. I need to know they’re serious,” says Trevor.
But without being pushy, it is still important not to be a pushover.
“Many of the people I deal with are self-assured, opinionated, hugely wealthy and stubborn,” he observes. “Vendors who ask more than the market value simply because they can. They don’t care one bit if that is an unreasonable price, or above the going rate.
“Often my task is to get two parties to agree to a sale when they don’t have to. It’s not as if they’re moving the family permanently to London and need to buy a place before the school term starts.”
This means understanding human nature is as important to Trevor as knowledge of the property market. “I need to find ways to dig people out of the holes they have dug for themselves, and enable them to do so without losing face. I have to come up with a solution but at the same time make sure that the person feels it’s his solution, and that the price agreed is his price.
“Sometimes, it’s like trying to hold peace talks between warring factions. One side is camped in one room, the other side is camped in another, and you’re having to shuttle between them. It’s a matter of getting the purchaser to take one step towards the vendor, then getting the vendor to reciprocate by taking a step nearer the purchaser. Until eventually they meet halfway.”
Whenever possible, Trevor insists that the deal is sealed not with a hastily scribbled signature, but with a face-to-face handshake and verbal promise.
“I like to make the two parties perform a little ceremony. I ask the vendor to look the purchaser in the eye and agree to stick to this agreement, even if offered more money. And I get the purchaser to look the vendor in the eye and promise they will stick to the deal, even if they are offered a cheaper house.
“The purpose of that ceremony is to hold the deal together during a cooling-off period that could last for weeks or months. I aim to bind them morally, as well as contractually.
“I am fully aware that if either of them gets a 10 per cent better offer in the meantime, then all that careful stitching will come apart at the seams. That’s just the way it is. After 38 years in this business, I am nothing if not a realist.”
Perhaps so. The obsession with location, the struggle to reach a price and the fear of being gazumped: these are all fears that most house-hunters will sympathise with. The sums involved on Bishop’s Avenue, however, are a long way from what most of us would recognise as reality. Still, it’s always interesting to take a peek over the 10ft fences, and see how the 0.0001 per cent live.
Glentree International (020 8458 7311; glentree.co.uk )
How to get the best out of estate agents, whether you’re in the £100,000 or £100 million price bracket
SELLERS
Say no to sole
Don’t sign up with just one agent, even if they will take less commission. Having two agents is better, because it creates competition and keeps both firms keen.
Be deaf to temptation
When estate agents are tendering for your business, don’t automatically go with the one who gives your house the highest valuation. They may just be after your business, and will advise you to drop the price once you’re on their books.
Say no to a “yes” person
Don’t hire an agent who always agrees with you. You need someone who can see the situation from the buyer’s point of view, who presents the transaction not as a war, but as a co-operative venture.
Don’t be blinded by science
Don’t be won over by the glossy adverts and brochures the agents produce to promote your property. The most important thing for an estate agent to do is to get lots of people to come and see your house.
Keep your cards close to your chest
Never let the estate agent know the lowest price you will accept. They may just aim for that, because it is less work.
BUYERS
Is it really an up-and-coming area?
Ask the vendors’ agents for factual evidence to back up their claim, e.g. tower blocks being demolished, regeneration schemes being launched, Waitrose branch opening soon.
Put your fingers in your ears
So you don’t hear the vendors’ agents make that teeth-sucking noise when you put in an offer they think is too low. They do it automatically, and besides, it is up to the actual owners of the property to decide, not them.
Ask the unaskable
Take a deep breath, and put this question to the estate agent: “Is there anything I ought to know about this property?” Watch carefully for any shifty reaction.
Go low, but give reasons
Explain to the estate agent why you are offering less than the asking price, e.g. the damp patch on the wall, the hideous bathroom suite, the asking rate in that street, plus prices recently fetched. That way, they may argue your case with their client.
Say no to Friday
Don’t be bullied by the vendors’ agent into completing on a Friday. If the money transfer goes wrong, you will have a long, miserable and possibly homeless weekend to get through before you can sort it out.
DON'T MISS: Some Real Estate Agents Will Go To Crazy Extremes To Sell A House
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