About
Our Philosophy
Most people’s first encounter with a property is through the pixels on their screen. Carefully stage-managed photographs and text paint an overly rosy picture, not the reality on the ground. It is the glossy surface, not the marrow, that people mostly consume when looking at over-marketed property.
We look for substance. Surprisingly few properties have much of it. They may dazzle and impress upon first sight, but most have no real enduring quality: nothing that makes the property a genuine joy to occupy or own.
Technology may be propelling property buying backwards. All prospective buyers are exposed to the same information via the major property portals: the same listings the second they drop, the same sales data, the same marketing. They are being digitally conditioned in much the same way as every other purchaser, likely to end up as their rivals.
But the algorithm cannot confidently solve the complicated task of finding the right habitat. Property is physical; it is a hard asset. It requires in-person analysis, hard-won experience, and an earned intuition that no portal or artificial intelligence has yet come close to replicating. One needs to take a different approach entirely.
Excellent property in a vibrant city or region is hard to obtain. It rarely comes cheap. It takes time, a process, and experience to procure. A successful acquisition should address needs the purchaser did not yet know they had. Every property carries a provenance that warrants tight examination; each link in a chain exerts its influence on the next.
The way one sees and thinks — one’s underlying philosophy — will determine the locations and structures sought out. Beliefs about cities, about architecture, about how people should live and work, all shape the brief before a single property has been inspected.
Data cannot be viewed in isolation; it needs a theory to interpret it. The lens through which a purchase is viewed, determined by philosophy and experience, is critical to the direction it will take. Even pragmatism is a philosophy. No one comes to a property search without one.
The introduction of a good adviser can change that lens entirely. It can alter the way one sees, and in doing so alter the outcome.
The best client briefs and mandates are rarely static. They move and morph. They change for the better when they encounter good information and well-reasoned thinking. A well-developed brief moves beyond the superficial world of the screen and gets closer to the essence of things as they actually are.
A good adviser is connected to local market conditions, understands buildings and land, carries hard-won experience in the acquisition of property, and keeps their client’s affairs private. Above all, they are not a mere order taker. They enrich the brief with their own thinking, and where no brief exists, help bring one into being.
An adviser worth their salt is likely to alter the course of outcomes — to secure a property that may not have been found, or to counsel against one that would have proven costly. The counterfactual is never really known. But if you are in good hands, you understand that your direction has been altered for the better. The first path taken sets everything that follows.
Perhaps of most importance is the nature of the people one is dealing with. Secret Agent prides itself on a way of dealing that goes beyond the contractual, and that harks back to older customs, where the market economy is understood as deeply bound to a moral code, and where a change in circumstances is met with understanding rather than rigidity. You can reason with us. We cannot expect this of those on the other side, who act for vendors or counterparties. But if client and adviser can build a level of trust deeper than any contract could achieve, it makes for a much better way to live and carry out business.
The big moments and decisions for clients in the end generally come down to a few major questions. Does this property have an underlying substance that makes it worth acquiring? Is there genuine value here — for me, and perhaps for those who come after me? Am I acting as sustainably as commercial viability allows? And what should I pay?
These are not easy questions to answer. They are, however, the right ones to ask. Sound answers to them sit at the core of our acquisition services. The pursuit of the right property, the right substance, the mutual respect and trust between principal and adviser, and the deep thinking required to get there underpin the philosophy of Secret Agent.
What makes a property worth acquiring in the first place is taken up separately.