Originally published August 2017.
About 30 years ago I remember my stepfather, a well-known man of considerable standing, surprising me by telling me I was in a ‘gentleman’s profession’. OK, he was quite old, but amongst the next generation up from me, i.e. the majority of the property transacting public, there was still a whiff of tweed and the fact that being an estate agent involved more of the estate than the agent. Those I met from country agencies could comfortably have been bit part actors in a period drama, and many still could be. Indeed estate managers were viewed, and looked up to, in much in the same way local vets and doctors were.
