Popular television has given most people their picture of the ultra-prime property market. Shows such as Selling Sunset and Buying London, as Michael Macfarlane puts it, revolve around drama and ego. In a Wealth Office X conversation with two London agents who work at the very top of the market, a quieter and more conservative picture emerges, built almost entirely on relationships.

Gary Hersham, associated with the record-breaking £210 million sale of the Rutland Gate mansion, and Irina Gamagina, who advises internationally mobile ultra high net worth families, describe a market in which information travels freely and loyalty decides who handles the deal.

A market with few secrets

A common assumption is that the most valuable homes change hands in a hidden market of private listings. Hersham disputes it. Many buyers begin by searching online, he says, but they do not ring the agent they find there. They call the person they have worked with for many years.

There's no real secrets about what is available and what is sold in the top end of the residential market.

— Gary Hersham, Wealth Office

He contrasts London with California and Los Angeles, where pocket listings are common. A property shown by one agent is soon discussed by buyers over supper with friends, and before long everybody knows about it. In his view, the volume of sales in that so-called market is small.

Gamagina offers an example. In 2015 she was selling an apartment at One Hyde Park. The buyers, Russians already living in the building, arrived with another agent, to whom she had to pay a large share of her fee. They walked through the apartment holding her own brochure, with her face and number on it, and still did not call her. Sellers want their property sold, she says, which makes it very hard to keep anything off the market.

It's just basically all about your relationship with your buyer.

— Irina Gamagina, Wealth Office

Discretion as a professional standard

If the availability of property is widely known, the identity of buyers is not. Hersham observes that in England a press release announcing a sale almost never names the purchaser. Agents rarely allow themselves to say who the buyer is, with or without confidentiality agreements. He believes that half a dozen of London's leading agents will know the buyers and what is happening in the market, yet parts of each story are routinely held back.

Macfarlane draws a parallel with the family office world, where deals are transacted privately and depend on who you know and how you are connected. The agents describe the same small-c conservative culture. In Hersham's view, the best London agents surpass their American counterparts in knowledge, experience and years in the business, and in knowing exactly what value is.

Where emotion meets discipline

Relationships also shape how buyers behave. Both agents describe an initial emotional response to a property that gives way as the costs come into view. Hersham says buyers have to like a property, its layout, rooms, building and facilities, before they will buy it. Then reality arrives. Buyers ask whether the property is held in a company and how much more it would cost if it is not. A buyer considering £65 million or £70 million, he says, may refuse to go up by £5 million because he believes he has reached the right price.

Hersham recalls an earlier era of competitive spending, which he illustrates with a joke about two Russians comparing what they paid for identical Hermès ties. Today, he says, the market is back to normality, and at the higher end buyers tend not to compete. Gamagina agrees. Competition, in her experience, often puts buyers off, and they simply ask to be told whether the property sells.

The adviser as filter

If information is plentiful, the value of an agent lies in judgement. Gamagina explains that families arriving in London often have no view on whether to live in Belgravia, Chelsea or near Regent's Park. Her first questions concern marriage, children and their ages. Small children point towards Notting Hill and its schools, while older children may mean Hampstead or somewhere outside London.

Hersham describes a method of showing a new buyer five or six properties to sense what they really want, even when the buyer does not yet know. In the 1990s and 2000s, he recalls, many buyers asked for Knightsbridge or Belgravia while picturing a double-fronted freehold house with a carriage driveway and a large garden. Such houses were not to be found there, which is why he had success selling houses in St John's Wood and Hampstead.

But really, a buyer wants to feel safe in your hands.

— Gary Hersham, Wealth Office

He describes the role as listening, avoiding pressure and helping a buyer understand what to value in a property and in an agent. Gamagina adds that no buyer can view thousands of properties. Clients rely on agents who have, and on their judgement in leading them to the right home.

The common thread is trust. In a market where almost everything is known, the relationship between buyer and adviser is what decides the outcome.