I would love to say that setting Based Property Specialists in Shoreditch was the plan from day one but it wasn’t. However, like many things in both life and business, fate often plays a part. After a disastrous attempt to set up in North London (where our Landlord let the property to his nephew the day before we were due to sign the lease) An and I agreed that we needed to rethink things. We agreed that we had chosen North London for all the wrong reasons- mainly because we wanted to work near our respective homes. Wrong, wrong, wrong!
Between us we had almost 15 years experience in the East London property market- particularly the Docklands and nearby areas. The trouble was, we didn’t want to set up there! Whilst there is much more going on there today, 9 years ago there was property and big business and little else and we knew we wanted to build a business where we could be passionate about the local area and people and not just focused on the volume of sales backed by boring statistics. And so, the search began. Truth be told it didn’t take long. We wanted an area with a strong property market; a diverse and interesting location both in terms of architecture and social environment; we wanted to be surrounded by similar minded boutique businesses that were looking to deliver something different with an underlying quality and finally we wanted easy access to the whole of East London along with a manageable commute. There really was not a big list- and Shoreditch was at the top.
An was still working, whilst I had left work over 3 months ago to set up the business, so we were keen to find somewhere and open up ASAP. So, having had the cash at the ready to sign our abandoned lease, I headed in to Shoreditch with £10k in my inside jacket pocket and a mission to find our brand new ‘HQ’.
Next time: The hunt for our Shoreditch offices
