About
A small agency that tells you which way the house faces.
We are two valuers and a photographer working out of one office on Cowdray Street. We cover Halbourne and the villages around it, we do not open branches we cannot staff, and we would rather turn down an instruction than over-value a house to win it.
What we believe
The two questions a buyer really asks — how much light does it get, and what will it cost to run — are the two an agent is most tempted to blur. We answer both up front. Every listing carries its EPC and the aspect of its principal rooms, and if a room never sees the sun we say so and price it accordingly.
How we charge
One sale fee, one management fee, both plus VAT, both on our fees page and on the footer of every property. No withdrawal fee, no tie-in past twelve weeks, and no admin fees to a tenant — ever. If a number is not written down, we have not charged it.
How we photograph a house
Every plate is graded to the compass bearing of the room it shows.
Daylight has a colour, and the colour depends on where it comes from. A north-facing room sees only diffuse skylight, which is cool and blue; a south-facing room sees direct sun, which is warm and amber; east and west sit between, at the bearing their light actually arrives on. Most estate-agent photography flattens all of that to a single bright, blue-white "clean" look that tells you nothing.
We do the opposite. Each photograph is graded on one axis only — the blue↔amber daylight axis — by the bearing of the room it shows, and nothing else is touched. The plate you see is the light that room gets. On a listing, scroll and the plate opens over exactly the hours the room is in sun on the shortest day, computed from its window's bearing, so the gallery composes itself in the order the house takes light. One flat on our books has a bedroom that never opens at all — because it faces due north, and on 21 December the sun never comes within sixty degrees of its window.
WARDENBY
31 Cowdray Street, Halbourne HB1 4QN
Monday to Friday 9–6, Saturday 9.30–1