By Joe Mclaren.
In our latest feature in the press, Black Brick Founder & Managing Partner, Camilla Dell features in The Standard to offer her advice to home buyers looking to get the best deal for their budgets.
At Black Brick, we believe that securing your dream home at the right price is rarely just about offering more money. It is about being better informed, better prepared and more emotionally intelligent than anyone else at the table. As one of London’s leading buying agencies, negotiation is at the very heart of what we do — and our Managing Partner Camilla Dell has shared her top tips with the Evening Standard.
The first and perhaps most important piece of advice Camilla offers is to understand why a seller is moving. Knowing someone’s motivation is crucial to understanding how far negotiations can realistically be pushed. Key questions to explore include whether the seller has an outstanding mortgage on the property, how long it has been on the market, and what offers — if any — have previously been made and rejected. This kind of intelligence transforms a negotiation from guesswork into a genuinely informed strategy.
Camilla’s second insight is equally powerful, and often underestimated: the personal touch. When formally submitting an offer, consider including a heartfelt note explaining why you love the property and what it means to you. In a market where sellers are often emotionally attached to their homes, demonstrating that you truly value what they have built can make a meaningful difference — particularly when competing offers are close in financial terms.
In the current market, where transactions have slowed significantly and buyers and sellers are frequently at an impasse, these skills matter more than ever. At Black Brick, we bring decades of negotiating expertise to every instruction, ensuring our clients are always in the strongest possible position — not just financially, but strategically.
Read more in the full article here.