They say things happen for a reason – chance encounters and kindness from strangers. For John Horton, Owner and Director of Horton and Garton, which has become one of west London’s most established property businesses, it started with a fax.
John Horton reflects on three decades in the industry, eighteen years building Horton and Garton, and the unexpected conversation that started it all.
It started with a fax
May is something of a milestone month. Horton and Garton turns eighteen on the 8th – and for me personally, it also marks thirty years in the property industry. Two anniversaries, one story.
Spring 1996. I had just returned from eighteen months abroad – watching the Ashes in Australia, travelling through Thailand, and following the cricket World Cup across India and Pakistan. It was the summer of Britpop, John Major was in Downing Street, Three Lions was on every radio and a pint cost £1.70. I needed a job and, more pressingly, needed to repay my mum for her extraordinary generosity in funding the adventure.
The first task was a CV. I needed it typed up and saved – to a floppy disk, naturally – which meant sending a handwritten draft by fax to a friend who could do that for me. The post office wanted £6. I decided to try my luck elsewhere.
My dad always said: it’s not what you say, it’s how you say it. So I walked into a series of local shops and asked, politely, whether they had a fax machine I could use. Door after door, the answer was no – broken machine, no machine, not today. I was about to give up when I walked into an estate agent on the high street.
The woman behind the desk said yes, absolutely, no problem at all. While the fax was feeding through, she glanced at my CV and noticed I had been travelling. The kettle had just boiled. Would I like a cup of tea?
Over that cup of tea we talked about Australia, Thailand, India. What I did not realise until somewhat later was that I was being interviewed. As I got up to leave she asked, almost as an aside: had I ever considered a career in estate agency?
I hadn’t. But I said: why not?
The following Monday I was at the head office in Chiswick for a formal interview. It was the first time I had worn a tie in over two years. I met the Area Manager, Andrew Nunn. We talked about cricket, football, wine and travel. Barely a word about estate agency. I was offered the job before I left the building.
I’ve never looked back.
Eighteen years of Horton and Garton
Horton and Garton opened its doors on 8 May 2008. Eighteen years on, the business is still rooted in the same principles it started with: honest advice, excellent service and a genuine commitment to achieving the best possible outcome for every client.
Property knowledge can be learned. It is the instinct for people – building trust, understanding what a client really needs, navigating the moments that matter – that separates a good agent from a great one. Horton and Garton has always been in the business of people first.
The market has changed enormously across those eighteen years. The way people search for property, the tools available, the expectations of buyers, sellers, landlords and tenants – all of it has shifted. What has not changed is the fundamentally human nature of what we do. Property transactions are among the most significant decisions people make in their lives. Getting it right matters.
One of the details that means most to us is this: there are properties we have now sold four times. The same home, four different chapters. That kind of repeat trust is not something you can manufacture – it is earned slowly, transaction by transaction, over many years.
The five things I love most about being an estate agent
After thirty years, the parts of the job that motivate me most are the same ones that drew me in at the start.
Matching people and property.
Finding the right home for the right person is endlessly satisfying. When it works well, it feels less like a transaction and more like a solution.
Closing a deal
The moment when both sides reach agreement and the deal is done. Getting there – and exceeding what a client expected – never gets old.
The team
Working with colleagues who consistently perform and who take genuine pride in what they do. The people around me are a constant source of energy in this business.
The community
Thirty years of relationships with clients, customers and people who have become proper friends. That does not happen by accident.
Walking to work
I live within a kilometre of our Chiswick and Hammersmith offices. On a good morning I can smell the malt from Fuller’s Brewery on the way in. I am not superstitious, but I do know that when I can smell the brewery, it is going to be a good day.
The next thirty years
Sellers, buyers, landlords and tenants will always need a professional local agent who knows their market. That is not a view I hold out of sentiment – it is borne out by experience. What I would like to see over the next thirty years is a properly regulated industry with fees that reflect the genuine value of what good agents deliver. London currently has some of the lowest estate agency fees of any major city in the western world. That is a conversation our industry needs to have.
In the meantime: thank you. To every client who has trusted us over the past eighteen years, to every colleague who has been part of building this business, and to the woman in the estate agent who said yes to a young man with a fax. Thank you.
Onwards and upwards.
John Horton, co-founder, Horton and Garton
