We are delighted to announce former Northfields owner Richard Palfreeman has joined the Property Academy board of trusted advisors. Richard will work alongside Peter Knight, Peter Rollings and David Smith, chairing our Leadership Groups and providing invaluable guidance on strategies and tactics to our Property Academy members.
Richard owned and operated award-winning Northfields in West London for over 34 years.
He strategically expanded the business across West London from 1 office to 4 offices specialising in sales, lettings, property management and new homes and went on to sell it in March 2022 to the Leaders Romans Group in a planned exit.
Earlier this month Richard spoke at our 10X event, sharing his experiences of selling his estate agency business, a process that he built up to over many years. Richard commented:
“I was the very first member of the Property Academy in 2008 and it has helped me and other estate agent colleagues share best practice in a supportive environment to deal successfully with both market challenges and growing our businesses. The Academy was instrumental in helping me successfully and confidentially plan to sell my business to LRG group in March 2022.
I hope my 34 experience of running a lettings, sales and new homes business will be beneficial to other estate agency owners who’s issues in building and running a business I can certainly relate to. Having recently sold the business in March this year I am also able to share some very practical ideas on maximising the value of an estate agency business too.”
Richard’s appointment comes as we look to expand The Property Academy to incorporate more Leadership Groups to provide broader support to more estate agency business owners. There are a lot of factors in play at the moment that make leadership challenging due to the economic conditions.
Peter Knight commented “In challenging times, you need great people, tactics and confidence in your decision-making. Retaining staff at a time when there is a shortage in quality candidates, keeping staff motivated as it becomes harder to build pipelines, empathising with staff who are feeling the pinch of rising costs of living, combating gloomy media headlines with factual communications – these are all real challenges estate agency owners face right now, and there are many more too – they come up at every meeting.
“Having the opportunity to accessadvice and experience from other experienced estate agency owners is, I believe, invaluable. These people are in the same shoes as you, know your industry inside out and have broad experience spanning many different market conditions. Property Academy’s Leadership Groups create a forum for these discussions.”
Would you like to experience a Leadership Group Meeting?
Property Academy will be hosting a trial Leadership Group meeting in London on Tuesday 12thJuly which will be chaired by Richard Palfreeman. The meeting will also incorporate a workshop from David Smith on ‘Bad Bosses: The Top 10 Leadership Pitfalls’. David has over 35 years corporate experience of change management, the last 15 years of which were spent in the turnaround of the Asda Retail Business. The Workshop will examine the link between bad leadership behaviour and the health/performance of the workforce.