London Property

Comparing the real estate markets of NYC and London

Blog Post No.81

Comparing the real estate markets of NYC and London

18/02/2022

With over 20 years of national and international real estate experience, Lee has travelled all over the world in the last few decades, brokering deals, meeting people and building relationships and her network.


Lee previously worked for Sotheby’s International Realty as International Director for over 20 years. She then moved on to Compass, a technology-based real estate company. Compass wanted to incorporate the international concept into its technology-based real estate strategy.


This prompted Lee to form something unusual, from her personal perspective. The Summers Global Team team is made up of brokers in the real estate industry from different countries including the United States, Europe and Asia. They are represented in all major cities and are equipped to handle the needs of anyone who wants to buy or sell within the international market.


She also notes that with Asia being for all intents and purposes closed for the last two years this market is on hold for the time being.


Everyone on The Summers Global Team is interviewed by Lee herself. They have to have a certain personality that complements the team. As they are actually representing Lee and her name this is an important part of the hiring process for Lee. They are all individual brokers and successful brokers at that, with experience in various countries.


Lee laughingly refers to her old school “Rolodex” of names. In a situation where one of her team cannot help a client, she will then speak to her personally vetted team of contacts from across the world to assist.


According to Lee, social networking is also very important. You can be at a dinner party with friends and someone mentions that they have always wanted a little place in Paris and they must remember to call their lawyer and find a suitable property. As The Summers Global Team is a referral business, this provides a great opportunity to help a potential new client.

Commissions in the UK are quite low, even compared to European standards, whereas in Spain it’s 5% and in Italy they have a new law, which is 3% – The seller pays 3% to his selling broker, and the buyer pays 3% of the buying broker.

Lee

 

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