If you’ve already binged “Selling Sunset” and “Selling the OC,” you can keep calm and carry on watching Netflix’s next foray into real estate reality TV, “Buying London.”
The United Kingdom–based series, premiering on Wednesday, stars real estate adviser Daniel Daggers and a team of agents from his DDRE Global real estate firm.
Over the course of his career, Daggers has racked up more than $5.5 billion in home sales in the U.K.’s luxury real estate market, which is referred to as the “super prime market” across the pond.
“It’s been a marketplace that I’m an expert in and have been for over 15 years now, so I called myself Mr. Super Prime,” Daggers tells Realtor.com®.
Eager to get to know Mr. Super Prime, we got Daggers to spill the tea on how he got started in the industry, the biggest sale he’s ever closed, and what his own London home is like. Plus, he breaks down the differences between the U.K. and U.S. housing markets. So take note of his advice for any buyer or seller looking to land a deal stateside or abroad.
How did you first get into real estate and eventually start your luxury real estate business, DDRE Global?
I fell over and I broke my collarbone wanting to be a professional footballer—I mean football as in soccer. I didn’t succeed at university. I didn’t do well there at all. I fell into real estate literally when I was 17, and I worked for 10 years in a small company in the window as a spotty teenager. Then I went to a big firm and scaled that big, corporate business.
[I] spent a lot of time in the U.S. [I] love the way real estate agents or brokers in the U.S. attack business. I think they’re super passionate, super driven, and they’re much more focused on service than we are here in the U.K.
I was really inspired, traveled the world, and then set up DDRE from my kitchen table in lockdown. You couldn’t have timed this worse in theory, but everything happens for a reason.
I’ve got a lot of clients who were traveling at the time, and they needed to rent a house with a garden, or they needed to move, and often they relied on me to make decisions.
Were you inspired by any U.S. agents we would recognize?
I know a lot of the top brokers there. So, for instance, I know personally Ryan Serhant, Fredrik Eklund, Josh Altman, [and] Noble Black. I spent years of my life traveling to the U.S. building great relationships with these top brokers because our world is getting much smaller, and we all have crossover at the top end of the market. So having really meaningful relationships with other brokers is very important for anyone’s career.
What makes ‘Buying London’ unique as a reality show?
Well, we’re British, right? So we’re going to do it very differently. You’re going to hear wonderful accents and see incredible real estate. I think people will see the language is slightly different, [and] the homes are typically very British, which is quite nice.
We are more reserved; we are more subtle. But, just like everybody, we’ve all got different sides of our characters, and sometimes we can be feisty. I just think people get mystified by our accents. As someone who’s done a lot of business in the U.S., I know that it does work wonders. Aren’t we lucky?
How does real estate in the U.K. differ from the U.S.?
There [are] a lot of nuances here. We have leasehold [property], freehold [property]—loads of different things that you don’t necessarily have in the U.S. that complicates a transaction and affects values.
Here in the U.K., you’ve got this thing called stamp duty, which is a significant burden. It’s a cost that you pay when you buy a property, which means you’re not flipping when you buy real estate here because it would be very expensive.
There’s three words we use in our industry. There’s broker, estate agent, and adviser.
An adviser is someone who is there when you need them to execute a transaction. They are there to give you advice in relation to real estate as a whole: What should your next purchase be? Where should it be? When should you do it? Have you financed it?
An adviser is someone you lean on for advice before you go and execute. Most of the work I do is advisory work before we get to the point of buying incredible homes all over the world.
Historically, one side paid fees in the transaction, and that was the seller. A portion of that is often made available for a buyer’s agent, but only a small portion. Now, there’s been an evolution over the past 10 years where buyers are saying, “We don’t want to be involved with the seller’s agent. We want some representation ourselves.”
They are called buying agents in the U.K. There’s an evolution taking place in our industry where they’re focusing more on service.
What makes the luxury real estate market in London stand out?
There are well over 200 transactions a year in London in the luxury segment of the market, what we call the super prime market—so, homes valued in excess of $10 million.
The thing you have to consider with U.K. real estate is that we don’t have much land. Unlike certain parts of the U.S., like New York, where you can build up, here you have issues with rights of light.
You can’t develop high-rises, so the land that the property sits on is unbelievably valuable.
Therefore, if you’ve got a property in the heart of London, and it is large and exceptional, then it carries such a big ticket because it is so special, and you cannot replicate it, and that’s the nuance around it.
That’s why people use London as a benchmark. It’s like a gold standard. If you own a home in London, then you’ve made it.
What trophy homes will we see highlighted on the show?
You’re going to see a house that is valued at around $620 million. I think that’s a first. It is incredible. It is probably one of the best homes on the planet. I lost count of the amount of bedrooms and bathrooms. The price tag sort of speaks for itself.
To date, what’s the most expensive home you’ve ever sold?
3 Carlton Gardens. It was a record-breaking transaction. It’s one of the most beautiful homes on the planet, and it’s also one of the closest residences to, at the time, our Queen, and now, our King. That’s a notable transaction, so I’m very proud of that.
What’s the craziest thing you’ve done to close a deal?
During COVID, I had some clients who are friends and they were coming to London on a [private jet]. They rented a home for short term for 40,000 pounds a week, and their money didn’t land, but their jet did. Someone had to get a week’s rent to the landlord, and so I did it. I didn’t expect a thank you, I just thought it was a nice gesture, and I very quickly got the money back.
Do you have any advice for buyers and sellers in today’s market?
Just buy. Buy it now. There’s always a good time to buy real estate depending on how long you can hold onto it for.
The most successful people I’ve ever met in my career bought when everyone else isn’t buying, and [are] selling when everyone else is buying. You just have to get the right advice.
I think Miami is still a great place to buy if you buy well. Dubai’s been very obvious. People are buying in Portugal in the Algarve [region] and other places that have good tax statuses for people. I also think there may be a really good opportunity coming up in London.
Where did you purchase your first piece of property, and did you learn anything from that experience that you still apply today?
I felt that real estate was a place where I could invest to make money, so I did a fixer-upper in North West London and I sold it. Then I did another fixer-upper in West London and sold that. That was just before 2008, and I did pretty well at that.
Since then, my home has been my home, and I’ve invested in several boutique projects: one in Central London, which [is] four penthouses. I’m also a co-investor in a couple of other things that don’t affect my client base because I don’t want to be in competition with my clients. I own a portion of a very beautiful hotel that is being built in Italy.
How do you describe your personal home?
When I buy real estate for myself, there has to be uniqueness around it because that’s where you can command a premium when you sell it. So I have an apartment in a street where it’s literally only houses. I have a beautiful southwest-facing garden, which is very valuable in the neighborhood I live in.
I love my living room. It’s a very warm place, but it’s very light and airy. I’m into soft luxury, but a little bit of minimalism as well, so it’s very clean. It’s a very calming space.
My days go a thousand miles an hour, and I’m making decisions for people all over the world, but when I come home, I really want a warm, comfortable, calm, place to rest my head.
I love my home; I love going home. It’s such a compliment when people come over and go, “It’s lovely here,” and they take their coat off.
Do you have any plans to expand your personal real estate portfolio?
I have an appetite to buy real estate, but I’ll be very opportunistic with it. I think it’s a good time in London to buy because the market has softened.
We’re looking to buy a development at the moment, and we’ve been very successful with our real estate investments, so it’s something I will continue to do for sure.
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