The ‘new school’ estate agent to the super-rich
When those of ultra high net worth want a new property in London, they turn to Becky Fatemi to sort out their homes — and their lives
Becky Fatemi knows more about the lives of London’s wealthy than most. The Iranian-born Londoner, 47, is one of the city’s leading property advisers and finds, buys, sells, manages and refurbishes homes for the super-super-rich. What she knows is not only where they live, but also how they live — from the number of servants they have and the size of their art collection, to the schools their children attend. As she says: “We don’t deal with bricks and mortar. People come to us to buy lifestyles. I have clients with great art who’ll say, ‘Becky, do you know someone who may want to buy my Picasso?’ And I’ll connect them.”
Which, presumably, is why Sotheby’s International Realty — run by George Azar, who owns Sotheby’s property companies in Dubai and Saudi Arabia too — merged with Fatemi’s Rokstone agency last month. The realtor wanted a broker in London who understands what the UHNWIs — or ultra high net worth individuals — want. And, if her figures are anything to go by, she understands. She has three London mansions worth over £225 million listed at the moment and in the 23 years leading up to the end of 2022, more than £8.3 billion of property had passed through her books.
When she first started out, the clients who bought from her were old money: “Predominantly Greeks at first, plus Iranian, British and European.” But in 2008, when the government changed the law and offered a “golden visa” in exchange for investment, that quickly changed. “The government wanted more foreign investment, so they made the business rates attractive and the banks were more amenable to opening up accounts. And that’s when you started to get Russians, Nigerians, Chinese … Just like what is happening in Portugal and Dubai now.” That boom meant that within a few years Fatemi went from employing one person and operating via a laptop to owning a nine-strong, Marylebone-based agency working with buyers who spent tens of millions on their homes.
Although she won’t name clients because of NDAs (non-disclosure agreements) and “the need for absolute discretion”, she’s had pretty much every type of buyer through her door. “Put it this way: I’ve sold to a Lord. To a prime minister. To a king. To a pop star. To a YouTube Star. To a Grammy award-winner.” One of her clients was Michael Heseltine, whose much-photographed Belgravia mansion she sold; another was a YouTube star “who wasn’t even 22, and spent £11 million”.
Often, she adds, it is slightly alternative clients who come to her because she’s not your average estate agent. Before joining Sotheby’s — which, she says delightedly, has a female MD and a more diverse workforce — her uniform was often “tracksuit or leggings” with a pair of colourful trainers from her collection “of hundreds”, with good jewellery and a designer bag. “You go to Knight Frank and Savills and they are very white and male, or blonde. But the demographic and age of buyers has changed. It’s more ‘new school’.”
Advertisement
Some of the “new school” buyers who come to her, she says, will pay pretty much anything to find a home in a specific area — or even the precise street. One family, she says, paid £100,000 a week to rent a house in Westminster. “But then, there were about nine of them, with staff and security, and their entourage.” Others are prepared to wait to find a house on a garden square in Notting Hill. “And if there isn’t anything for sale, I’ll approach owners to see if they’ll sell.”
Most of the homes Fatemi sells will cost between £8 million and £20 million (the cheapest she’ll take on is £2 million). Most are in Chelsea, Belgravia, Mayfair and Primrose Hill, although she has sold in Surrey, Hampstead, Totteridge and even Camberwell. Recently she has taken on a clutch of foreign properties owned by clients she knows well: a house in Majorca that she is selling for £35 million, a villa in Ibiza for £17 million, a new residential island in the Maldives.
In the past few years, she says, quite a few of her clients have started to move out of London to places such as Dubai. Not only because London is a tough city in which to get planning permission to make the changes they want, but also, “It’s a conservation area, with listed buildings, so you can’t just add a penthouse.” It’s also the crime and the weather. “London crime is bad,” she says. “In Dubai there’s not even litter on the streets. And there’s sunshine.”
When they do emigrate, many leave their homes empty rather than renting them out. Once they have paid stamp duty and taxes, they’re not making anything on those properties. Plus, renting’s a hassle. “I wouldn’t buy a flat for my son. You make more by leaving the money in the bank.”
The London exodus started, she says, with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. As an agent, “you have to keep an eye on the PEP list [of Politically Exposed People]. You have to be very, very hands on when it comes to compliance.”
In spite of her proximity to millionaires, Fatemi knows what it’s like to not have money. Her parents had to flee Iran during the revolution and at six months old she was sent to live at Norland Place school in London where she remained until she was 18 months old (a fact she knows only because when her mother died she discovered all the paperwork, including letters from nannies telling her mother how she had taken her first steps or said her first word). The whole family moved to the city permanently when she was three, living in a bedsit until they could get a loan for a flat. As a student, to make money she did “every job under the sun: I worked in cafés, cleaned toilets, did security, retail, telesales, events, styling.”
But without contacts, she says, she couldn’t progress further. It was only when she tried to sell ad space to Peter Rollings, then the boss of the estate agency Foxtons, that she got her break. “He said, ‘I don’t want ad space; I want you to work for me,’ and the rest is history.”
Her struggle is why she founded her Shadow to Shine charity, which mentors young people, “often young black adults from areas without mentoring programmes”, to boost their chances of employment. So far 300 young adults have been through the programme, helped by 400 volunteer mentors from partners such as Vogue, Samsung and the London Stock Exchange. What brings her joy, Fatemi says, is that the mentors “often say they have learnt just as much. So it’s not a one-way thing.” And in the property world, as she says, that’s very “new school”.
shadowtoshine.com
