Ben Goldsmith | Buying letting agencies in the South West and Wales

What I have bought

Anyone can say they are looking to acquire. These are the ones I have actually done, and you are welcome to go and ask about any of them.

Homelink Property Management

Narberth, Pembrokeshire · bought March 2022

Established in 1992 and the longest-serving independent letting agent in the county. The name is unchanged, the Narberth office is unchanged and the team is unchanged. It manages 340 properties, and its revenue has doubled in the four years since.

The Home Rental Company

Carmarthen

Lettings book acquired and brought into Homelink. The former owners kept their own portfolio and still let it themselves.

Skeleton Lets

Bristol

Lettings book acquired and brought into Goldsmith Property.

What happens after you sign

This is usually the thing an owner actually wants to know, and it rarely gets asked directly. So I will answer it first.

You have spent years building something, and the people in it are people you hired. The worry is not really the price. It is that the name goes, the staff are let go, the landlords get churned and the thing you built quietly disappears into somebody else's business.

I have not done that, and Homelink is the evidence. Four years on it still trades under its own name, out of the same office, with the same people answering the phone. It is bigger than it was.

That is not a promise about every deal, because every business is different and I will not pretend otherwise. But it is a record, and it is one you can check by ringing them.

What I am looking for

Predominantly lettings. A small amount of sales is fine. Lettings is recurring income and that is what I am buying.
A management structure already in place, or one person who runs the day-to-day and would consider staying.
Mid and South Wales, and the whole South West. Out to Gloucester and Swindon, and down through Devon and Cornwall. I will travel for the right business.
Businesses that serve the sector as well as agencies themselves: inventory and inspection firms, compliance and certification, and the trades that keep a managed book running.
Good businesses outside the sector where there is a team in place and the owner is ready to step back.

What the first conversation covers

Most first conversations open with a turnover figure and the question of what I would pay for it. I understand why, but a turnover figure on its own tells me very little, and any number I gave you back would be a guess wearing a suit.

So the first conversation is not about price. It is about two things, and the first one matters more than people expect.

About you

What you actually want out of this, and what a good outcome looks like from where you are sitting.

What matters to you beyond the money. Usually it is the staff, the name, or particular landlords you have looked after for years.

What your ideal exit looks like. Out cleanly on completion, or handing over across months.

Whether you want to stay involved at all. Some owners want the door shut behind them. Others would happily consult for six months, or a few years, and that suits me too.

About the business

Where the income comes from, and how much of it recurs.

How much of the book is fully managed, and how much is let only.

Who does what, and what happens if any one of them leaves.

What the compliance position looks like across the book, honestly.

Price comes after that, once I understand what I am buying well enough to say a number and stand behind it. Usually that is the second or third conversation, not the first.

Who I am

I run two independent letting agencies. Goldsmith Property in Bristol, which I set up in 2013, and Homelink Property Management in Narberth. Between them they manage over 400 tenancies under two separate rulebooks, the English legislation and the Renting Homes (Wales) Act.

Before any of that I spent seventeen years working on elections, in Bosnia, Kosovo, Georgia, Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan and elsewhere. On the big ones I was running them. I was Deputy Chief Electoral Officer for Afghanistan in 2005, responsible for a $159M budget and over 200,000 people working on election day. On the rest I was advising election commissions, or training their staff to run their own.

I mention it because buying a business is mostly a handover problem. Taking something complicated off one set of people and getting it running under another, without dropping it in the middle. That is the work I did for seventeen years before I did this one.

The full record, dated and role by role, is on my LinkedIn profile. I would rather you checked than took my word for it.

If you are thinking about it

You do not have to be ready to sell. Most of the useful conversations I have had started a year or more before anything happened, and plenty of them went nowhere, which was fine.

No form, no funnel, nothing that puts you on a list. Ring me or email me and you will get me.

Telephone 07967 663425 Email ben@goldsmithacquisitions.co.uk