No recriminations and no regrets, says Hugh Dunsmore-Hardy of the HIPs crisis

One of the industry’s best known people is celebrating both his 70^th birthday and over 50 years in the industry.

At a reception in central London last night, former NAEA president and CEO Hugh Dunsmore-Hardy welcomed colleagues, friends and associates.

Dunsmore-Hardy, now a non-executive director with franchise firm Winkworth, started working in the industry at the age of 17 and said yesterday he has no immediate plans to retire.

He also acknowledged, for the first time, the scale of the Home Information Pack crisis that drove him from office at the NAEA, but he said he had neither recriminations nor regrets, and would still support the HIPs philosophy of speeding up home sales.

Dunsmore-Hardy began his long career with Hampton & Son – the firm that has morphed into today’s Countrywide brand Hamptons International.

“When I joined there was still one remaining member of the Hampton family there, who still owned it, and I worked for two directors in the international department, in an office opposite the Ritz,” he told EYE yesterday.

“I had originally wanted to be a journalist, but a careers consultant suggested to me that maybe I should consider estate agency.”

After his introduction to the industry he moved as a negotiator to C Bridger & Son in Surrey. The firm dated back to the 19^th century and Dunsmore-Hardy joined its Ashstead office near Epsom.

He recalls selling large semis on the Berg Estate for between £3,500 and £4,000. Today they go for between £650,000 and £700,000.

At 21, he was appointed office manager: “Looking back, I was far too young but I managed to do okay with it, and was then asked to become an equity partner of what became Bridgers.”

In 1986, Bridgers was sold to an investment firm that also acquired mortgage broker John Charcol, which wanted to own a chain of agents. Among the other agents purchased was Hamptons.

Dunsmore-Hardy stayed on with the new corporate owners until the end of 1993, by which time he had served a year as President of the NAEA between 1991 and 1992.

During this time he paid a pivotal part in the development of what is now the Property Ombudsman scheme. It had originally been launched as the Corporate Ombudsman Service, as a marketing tool for corporate agents to target the public.

It hadn’t worked, because the public wanted access to more than the ‘big boys’: Dunsmore-Hardy played a pivotal part in early discussions to get independents involved.

The NAEA had never had a CEO, with the chief job having had secretarial status, but advertised the vacancy, and in 1994 Dunsmore-Hardy became its first chief executive.

Under his leadership, the NAEA was seldom out of the headlines: one of his greatest and undeniable gifts was his handling of the media, long before the NAEA hired big gun central London PR agencies to do it. His willingness to give quotes on anything from the merits of conservatories to the state of the housing market to journalists ranged gracefully from the most junior reporter on a regional weekly up to the specialist writers on the dailies.

But then along came Home Information Packs – something which became a crisis for the NAEA, with its then chief executive’s stance becoming totally at odds with those of the membership.

Dunsmore-Hardy yesterday recalled to EYE: “The project was a challenge for me personally, as I supported HIPs, especially when the mark 1 version included a Home Condition Report.

“I believed, and still believe, that the principal of pre-packaging a property to get it ready for marketing is the right one. It speeds things up. I felt it could have helped with the sale process and help estate agents launch associated services – but more importantly, help the public.

“Unfortunately, not all the NAEA members agreed with this stance.”

The SPLINTA campaign led by Nick Salmon succeeded in overturning the strategy. However, Dunsmore-Hardy yesterday said he absolutely did not blame Salmon.

He could, perhaps, even have blamed me as I covered what was a swiftly unfolding, extraordinarily political and ever-intriguing story. He has never once chosen to do so and despite what could have been enmity over the years, we have always had mutual friendship and respect.

Nevertheless,  the hard truth is that Dunsmore-Hardy quit his job at the NAEA after nearly ten years because of that crisis: “Home Information Packs were still a work in progress,” he says, unable to reconcile his own views with those of the membership.

Regrets? None. He says he holds no grudges, and that people simply did what they thought was right.

He does, however, still believe that HIPs would have been the right way to go.

In 2003, he launched his own property consultancy.

Among his clients were the RICS and Winkworth, who invited him to become a non-executive director a couple of years later, with responsibility for client relations and compliance.

He now travels to London from his home in Cheltenham one or two days a week, working the rest of the time from home.

What does he think have been the main changes he has seen over the last 50-plus years in the industry?

Obviously technology: “I used to spend hours turning by hand an old Gestetner machine, producing particulars with no pictures,” he recalls. “Yet Bridgers was one of the first to introduce pictures and we even had our own in-house printers.

“Now, everything is digital and instant, but I sometimes worry that old-fashioned courtesies are not easily expressed in texts and emails.

“Legislation and regulation are also an increasing problem for the agents, but I regret that no government has bitten the bullet and introduced minimum standards and licensing.

“The rise of online agents has undoubtedly become a challenge, but one that high street agents can rise to, by virtue of their USP.

“Local agents, who truly know their local patch and have a strong customer service principle, know this is still a people business.

“Clients will continue to appreciate that true local knowledge, and the ability of the high street agent to act as broker between two people wanting very different things – a vendor who wants to get as much as possible, and a buyer who wants to pay as little as possible.

“Good agents do what they have always done: they get the deal done.”

Happy birthday, Hugh.