Charlie Searl, Land Manager

Charlie Searl is a Land Manager at Searls Land and has worked for the company for five years.

What’s your professional background Charlie, how did you end up at Searls Land? 

I worked for a housing association in London for five-and-a-half years before Searls. Every new development in the country has an element of affordable housing on it now, usually around 40 per cent of the development. I would speak with developers and essentially do what we do for land, but for the affordable side of the developments. Then I went traveling for 18 months. When I got back my dad, Tim (Searls Managing Partner), said there was an opening at Searls. It was crucial to me that I had earned my stripes elsewhere – so I would be known as Charlie rather than Tim’s son – and I’d done that, so I went for it.

What does your role at Searls Land consist of?

I work in the immediate land team. We deal with contracts from one to five years. My patch is West Surrey, Berkshire, Buckinghamshire, Hampshire and going down onto the south coast. So it’s a fairly big patch and I look at anything within there that will make us any money. Anything with or without a planning consent, unconditionally or subject to achieving planning with any scope from two or three nice luxury houses, with no real upper limit.

And how are those land parcels identified in the first place? 

It’s a mixture. Either direct approaches from us via letter or knocking on their door, or through business-to-business relationships. If the strategic department gets planning on a site, we are then instructed to resell it for the promoter. Our reputation is strong enough now that companies also approach us because they believe we are well placed to sell a site for them and could approach our own clients as potential buyers.

What do you put in a letter to make Searls an attractive proposition to them? 

You just try to make it as bespoke as possible. Some of the mapping systems other agents use allow you to create a generic template at the push of a button and it just slots the address in for you. We would never do that, because it feels too impersonal and the success of our business relies on building strong relationships with all parties involved. We have our own wallets, they’re A4 – because A5 letters don’t really attract much attention – and they mention the specific property in question. We talk about why we think it has good planning prospects, or if it has planning, we talk about why we think we’re best placed to help. We just try to make it personal rather than feeling like it’s just been churned out of a machine. It’s all on one page, nice and succinct.

In terms of land searching, you must have scoured every inch of your patch by now? 

Yes, but new planning permissions come forward every month. I also make second and third approaches to landowners. Also, new Government policies bring forward new sites as well. So, where the Conservatives have been saying leave the Green Belt alone, Labour is more on board with doing something in the Green Belt, which opens up a whole raft of new sites to go and look at. Also, Labour being more pro-development means I’ve been going through old letters and identifying sites that maybe wouldn’t have come forward under a Conservative government but will now be a lot more likely to.

Can you tell us about your favourite deal?

I did a deal in Send, Guildford which had lots of issues and a tricky landowner. What I liked about this deal is that it was the complete process, from identifying the site, to getting an offer accepted, and eventually getting the deal done. I learnt a lot through this process, and we also sold it to a company who are going to sell the site on once it gets planning, so it will provide us with two fees rather than one.

What can you tell the landowner initially about how much money they might earn from a land sale?

Not much. We tell them it’s a good prospect, but until we get an offer from someone, nothing is confirmed, and we would never want to set aspirations too high or too low through fear of not getting the response we want, or leading them down a path that’s never going to come to fruition. That can make for a very difficult conversation.

Why wouldn’t a landowner go straight to a housebuilder and offer their land for sale? 

The key is we represent far more opportunities to sell. We can also be more discreet, so if someone approaches us and asks us to make a couple of quiet enquiries to clients as to whether they are willing to buy their land, we can do that. On the other hand we can also do the opposite to the latter and approach lots of potential buyers we have relationships with, that they wouldn’t have access to.

What’s the state of the market at the moment? 

The last year has been a tough one throughout the industry. However, we’re in a good position with our pipeline, and still manged to get some good deals done. So, I think financially, last year looked pretty healthy but we had to fight for every deal and new sites were a little more sparse than usual.

The change of government feels positive, people are making all the right noises, but policy takes a bit of time to catch up. I think for the rest of this year there are going to be deals out there, but we won’t see a massive boom yet. Next year will hopefully be a good one, because people are contacting us more regularly with an appetite to buy sites, which hopefully we can source for them. So I think the market is improving. I just think it’s going to take some time to get fully moving.

If there’s one thing you could change about your work, what would it be?

It would probably be something to do with planning. Land searching can also be a bit monotonous, but it has to be done.

What makes Searls so good at what they do?

Adam’s (Galbraith, Senior Land Manager) been here 10 years now. Dan Acutt’s (Director of Operations) been with us for 15. Tim’s been doing this for 30+ years. I think over that time we’ve built a reputation for being easy to work with and to socialise with. That makes calling us when clients have a problem much easier for them.

I think we’ve proven over the years that we deliver good opportunities and follow through with getting the deals done. When clients end up buying sites through us and see that we fought hard for it or have gone the extra mile, they’re likely to offer us more business which is what we want, repeat business.

How important is that socialising element?

It is paramount. Without it we would struggle. I tell people outside the industry that I’m playing golf or at another event and they often tell me that’s not working. But in fact, it’s those days that mean the most. Spending a day playing golf or an evening at an event with someone and seeing the real person behind the emails/calls makes it that much easier to pick up the phone to them when you need to and vice versa.

That’s something Tim has always instilled in the company, that we need to be going out there and we need to be building relationships.

What characteristics do you need to be good in this line of work? 

You have to be very patient; nothing happens quickly in this industry and time delays are just part and parcel of just about any land deal.

Sometimes deals can progress for months and then collapse at the last hurdle. How do you deal with that?

The first couple of times that happened to me, they were in a very advanced state and fell away through no fault of our own and it did knock my confidence a bit. But you have to just accept it and move on, unfortunately it’s just part of the job sometimes.

How important to Searls Land’s success is the close-knit team you have here?

It is an important part of the business. I’ve known Adam since I was three or four years old. Sam (Dutton, Senior Strategic Land Manager) again, I’ve known him since I was a baby. Ed (Searl, Senior Strategic Land Manager) is my brother, Tim’s my dad, and Dan has been with the company for 15 years, so he’s been living around me and our family for a long time. It becomes a very easy place to walk into.

Where would you see yourself in five years’ time?

A limitation of being in a smaller business is that growth can only go so far. However, working on a commission basis means that you can improve and earn more money year on year and that’s what I’d like to achieve.

And what’s Tim like to work for?

He’s very good. He wants the company to excel and does everything he can to make that happen but is understanding of market conditions and how challenging the job can be.

Most members of the team came to Searls with no, or limited experience at land agency and Tim trained and sculpted us into really good land agents over a number of years. He allows us to work fairly flexibly, and the work/life balance is worth its weight in gold. And he wants us to get out there and do the fun stuff, as long as the work gets done.