Brightsale

The news that the unfortunate new owners of Foxtons have called in NH Rothschild’s to perform a ‘strategic review’ of the business made us smile. They say that in the land of the blind the one eyed man is king. But in the land of estate agency, Jon Hunt appears to have had a telescope when everyone else was using a microscope.

Foxtons was bought (as everyone now knows) right at the top of the market by the private equity group BC Partners. How much insight BC Partners put into UK estate agency is not clear (their previous acquisitions were in healthcare and publishing), but one suspects that their vision was positively 20/20 compared with the two groups that put up the bulk of money: Bank of America and Mizuho, who between them lent BC £260 million to fund the purchase. We are certain that Rothschild are a top quality investment bank, but we wonder whether the venerable old firm is really the right person to advise on the future of estate agency in 2008.

So here is our offer… in April this year we wrote a report entitled (co-incidentally) The Future of Estate Agency(PDF) . We are prepared to let Foxton’s executives have a copy of it FREE, as an alternative to their multi-million pound ‘review’ by the blue-blooded bank. Our note sets out clearly how the branch-less online model works and how it delivers superior customer service at a price vendors judge to be fair and reasonable (i.e. a long way from Foxton’s 3% tariff).

With the money they save on the advice, Foxtons might even be able to fuel their minis for another few weeks…