- Home
- Private client & off-market
Representation
Private client
& off-market.
Between four and six of the fourteen estates we represent each year are never advertised at all. This page explains how that works, because the alternative is a page that says nothing.
Terms of engagement
What discretion means in practice.
People come to this arrangement for ordinary reasons. A separation that has not been explained to the children. An estate being settled between siblings who are not speaking. A relocation the board does not know about yet. Occasionally a house so recognisable that a public listing would produce three hundred visitors and one buyer. In every case the owner wants the transaction without the announcement.
So there is no MLS entry, no syndication to portals, no sign in the grass, no just listed card through the neighbours' doors and no social post. The photography is commissioned and then held, watermarked and released only to a named viewer under agreement. The property is described in our register by neighborhood and specification, never by address, and the address itself is given verbally by one of the principals once the agreement is signed and funds are evidenced.
The buyer side of the same arrangement is a standing brief. You tell us what you would move for, we hold it, and when something matching comes across the desk you hear about it before the market does. Several of our sellers came to us in the first place because we had knocked on their door for a client and they had kept the card.
Access is not open. We ask for proof of funds or a lender commitment before an address is released, we decline viewers we cannot verify, and we do not run private opens or broker previews. A discreet sale is typically shown to fewer than a dozen people. That is not scarcity theatre; it is the number of buyers who genuinely exist for a particular nine thousand square foot house on a particular street in a particular quarter.
What we owe you in return is candour about the trade. Privacy costs exposure, and exposure sometimes produces the highest bid. Where we think a public campaign would earn you materially more, we say so and we will run one properly. Where we think it would not, we say that too, and then we get on with the quiet version.
Confidentiality here has no expiry date. There are closings from 2019 we will still not discuss, and there are two addresses in the portfolio that will never appear on this website in any form.
Questions
Reasonable things to ask.
How does a house sell with no listing, no portal and no sign?
Through a list rather than a market. We maintain a small register of qualified buyers for these three neighborhoods, most of them people we have already transacted with or vetted, and we take a private offering to the handful whose brief actually matches. A discreet sale is usually shown to between four and twelve people in total. It is a narrower audience by design, and it works because the audience is real rather than notional.
What does the confidentiality agreement cover?
The address, the fact of the sale, the photography and the offering documents, and anything a viewer learns about the household while inside. It is signed before an address is released and it survives the transaction, which is why we will still not confirm several sales we closed years ago. Both principals are bound by the same terms, and nothing is entered into a shared system or a syndication feed.
Does selling privately cost me money?
Sometimes, and we will say so before you decide. A private sale trades the widest possible bidding pool for control, and on an unusual property that pool is where a surprising number comes from. Where the house is a known quantity in a street buyers already want, the difference in our experience has been immaterial, and the certainty and quiet have been worth more to the seller than the last one per cent. We give you our honest read on which case you are in, and we are happy to be told to list it publicly instead.
The public version of the same work is described under selling an estate. What we do show publicly sits in the portfolio.