The Financial Times speaks with property advisor platform First In The Door about the launch of the business and the widening popularity of buying agents in the UK, for all budgets:
First-time buyers with a budget of £850,000 looking to buy in north London, Richard and Sunita Thorpe followed the usual patterns. They signed up to local estate agents and obsessively scrolled the internet for properties. Six months later, they still hadn’t found a home. A chance conversation with an American colleague at his King’s Cross consultancy firm presented Richard with a new approach. “‘Speak to a buying agent,’ he said,” recalls Richard. “It’s the only way when buying property in the US.”
The couple signed up with First In The Door, a property adviser platform set up by Claire Whisker in 2023 that matches people looking for properties with buying agents — a real estate agent retained under contract to work solely for the property buyer. While working in Los Angeles, Whisker had seen the popularity of buying agents across a wide range of budgets in the US first-hand.
“Traditionally, in the UK, buying agents were the preserve of the very wealthy with a budget of £3mn-plus,” says Whisker. “But awareness of the sector has risen; in the past three months, we’ve seen a 12 per cent increase in searches from buyers with sub-£1.1mn budgets. In July, we registered buyers in Brighton with budgets of £650,000 and £1mn and one in Oxfordshire for £750,000.”