Is Foxtons the estate agent London deserves?
Hunt has a cautious side – “I will sit outside a property for six hours watching the traffic flow before I decide [to buy it],” he told the Mail in 2009
.. From the mid-90s to the early 2000s, the Times reported in 2003, Foxtons employed subcontractors to pull down and destroy thousands of its rivals’ “for sale” boards. Foxtons admitted that it had done so for “a limited period in 2001”, and a police investigation followed. No charges were brought. It became clear that other London estate agents had also been waging “board wars”; only the thoroughness with which Foxtons had done so made it stand out.
.. “First, there is a pep talk – or you’re all told off,” Burgess remembered, “and then you get to shout out your figures. It shows on the screen where you are in the rankings. If you’ve done well, you’re buzzing. It’s one of the funnest parts of the week.” Successful employees are offered an elaborate sequence of bonuses. There are “trip targets” – sales attainments that earn company-funded skiing or Mediterranean holidays; and “car targets” – first a Mini, then a BMW, then a Mercedes. The slick Foxtons website shows packs of tanned, beaming, sometimes flirtatious staff holding beers, up mountains, playing beach volleyball. Burgess said that working at Foxtons sometimes feels “like being in a sports team, when you get a new kit. You all smell good. You feel you’re the dog’s bollocks.” Like you’re an elite? “No … a gang!”
.. “A year and a half is a pretty good innings at Foxtons. It drains you. Everyone looks so much healthier after they leave.”