According to agents in Leeds, London’s streets are no longer paved with gold.
The Northern lads and lasses believe their city has everything needed to do business, and can still be a serious player within the commercial property market.
The agents are eager to highlight the benefits of living and working in Yorkshire’s premier city and say they are attracting more local graduates away from London’s bright lights. They claim they are also getting more qualified, experienced agents coming from the capital and other cities.
But you can still come across the attitude that anyone from the South cannot work in the Leeds market.
References to “soft southerners” and suggestions that “West End agents are up their own backsides” are still alive and well.
Ironically, some of these commentscome from those attached to the major national agencies that, out of the78 surveying practices in the city, dominate the top end of the Leeds market.
Unlike other major UK cities, such as Birmingham, which has BK, or Manchester, with Dunlop Heywood Lorenz, there is no big local agency that competes on the same scale as the Jones Lang LaSalles and DTZs.
This is purely down to national firms, such as DTZ, having bought up local agencies like Bernard Thorpe.
As a whole, the national and local agencies sit quite happily together, and Leeds as a market has become large enough to support most firms that have decided to branch out by opening practices in the city.
As a result, they are able to offer graduates and those returning back home better prospects and training programmes, the opportunity to work with a range of clients from local and national firms, and something all the agents highlight – quality of life.
“The trend has definitely changed against people [in the profession] going to London,” says Andrew Rodger of GVA Grimley. “My view is that London is not the place to be.”
Rodger, like other Leeds agents, is quick to talk about the firm’s graduate courses and the fact that firms in the city are close to Sheffield Hallam University, where they present talks regularly.
“Kids from Sheffield come to Leeds to work,” says Rodger.
Alistair Russell of Jones Lang LaSalle says: “We offer great career choices and packages. We can offer the quality of life. It’s a lifestyle choice.” He adds that most people in his office do not travel for longer than 20 minutes to get to the office.
Andrew Wells of Allsops brings up the issue of house prices. He says it is cheaper for agents to live in Leeds, pointing to the average house price of £100,000.
Wells says he does not know anyone who has left Leeds to work in London, while other agents claim that working in London can be a disadvantage. “Being candid, in my experience, people who worked in London markets and moved to the regions found it quite difficult,” says Russell.
There is no suggestion that any agent, graduate or experienced, is not good enough to cut it in Leeds. Rather, agents say it is difficult to break into the local market.
“The brand value of the firm is enormous. As you move out of London it becomes more difficult to keep your contacts,” says Russell.
One agent, who did not want to be named, goes further: “It’s highly unlikely anyone would come from London and set up a niche practice. I can see London people coming up and being shut out. It’s human nature. You deal with people you know.”
This leads inevitably to the question of whether outsiders are accepted into the Leeds market.
Rodger talks about firms “needing local people and people on the ground to attract clients”. When discussing who works in Leeds, the word mafia comes up occasionally.
Russell says he came up against it when JLL decided to open an office in 1995, and some locally-based agencies did freeze him out. But, he says, he is now part of the “Leeds mafia”.
However, it could have been different if Scots-born Russell, who came from Edinburgh to open the office, had been from the South. “When I came, I was an acceptable face of Jones Lang LaSalle. I wasn’t from London, so they couldn’t make fun of me. I wasn’t West End.”
A straw poll of the agencies does show that they are mainly staffed by Yorkshire people. JLL has roughly 28 out of 30 people who are either Yorkshire born or have Yorkshire connections, and DTZ is split “80% local people, 20% elsewhere”.
At Insignia Richard Ellis, Guy Gifillian admits that “we are predominately Yorkshire and Scottish people”.
Some agents put the high percentage of local staff down to the strength of the Leeds market, which allows people that want to follow their hearts and stay at home to do so.
And in fairness, not all Leeds agents think “a Yorkshireman is best”.
“That attitude is becoming far less prevalent than it was a number of years ago, as globalisation has taken over. You can’t be that parochial,” says Andrew Gent of DTZ.
What does matter is the contacts these national firms have established in the Leeds market. The catchphrase from firms such as JLL and DTZ is that they are, as Russell puts it: “Local agents within a national and international firm.”
Putting aside whether an agency is local or National, or Yorkshire or London-based, Leeds agents like to remind the rest of the country that Leeds is well connected to the wider world.
As Rodger puts it: “Your gateway to working in London is through Leeds and other regions, and your gateway to work around the world is through London.”
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Big can be best |
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National agents can be of benefit to local firms |
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Lawson Hubbard Lowe is one of the few purelyLeeds-based agencies that can hold its own among the national giants. Until two years ago, it had the instruction on the historic Victoria Quarter, which houses Harvey Nichols. But far from being in competition with the big boys, especially the London-based agencies, partner Powell Rose believes it can be good to work with them. “If we are dealing with a very big scheme we will work with any of the London agencies,” Rose says. “The main reason is to ensure that no stone is left unturned and that all areas of the deal are covered. “Whoever is handling the deal wants to justify that he or she has everything from the agent, and that they have instructed a London agent.” Rose adds that they can draw on advice and additional resources, such as research, from a national agent, and that there is a preconception that the London agent is better. But, he adds: “We are capable of giving strategic advice ourselves.” |
