Why We Declined Eleven Acquisitions Last Year

In 2025 we were instructed on acquisitions that we subsequently advised our own clients not to complete on eleven occasions. Nine of those clients took the advice. Two did not, and one of those two has since told me they wish they had.

A selling agent is paid when a property sells. A buying agent paid on completion is in exactly the same position — the fee arrives only if a transaction occurs, which means the incentive to find a reason to proceed is structural rather than personal.

We charge buy-side mandates on a retained basis. The fee is the same whether a client buys the first property we show them, the fortieth, or none at all. This is not a moral position; it is an engineering one. Remove the incentive and the advice changes.

Four failed on title — undisclosed easements, an unregistered right of way, and in one case a boundary that had been informally moved in the 1980s and never regularised. Three failed on structure, all three concerning substrate rather than the building.

Two failed on the model. Both were presented with rental figures that assumed occupancy rates the local market had not achieved in any of the preceding six years. One failed on planning: a neighbouring plot held a live consent for a building that would have removed the entire sightline.

The eleventh failed because the client, on the third viewing, could not answer what they would do there on an ordinary Tuesday. That is a legitimate reason to stop.

Declining eleven transactions cost us a meaningful amount of revenue we would otherwise have recognised. It is worth being explicit that this is a real cost and not a rhetorical one.

What it purchased was the ability to say, credibly, that when we do recommend a property, the recommendation means something. Six of those nine clients subsequently completed on an alternative through us. The other three are still looking, and we are still retained.