NORTH NORFOLK ESTATE AGENT REACHES 50 NOT OUT

A north Norfolk estate agent is celebrating 50 years working for the same firm – and says he still gets the same buzz out of closing a sale as he did when he started.

Clive Hedges joined Keys – now Arnolds Keys – immediately after leaving school in 1974, and has managed the firm’s branch in his home town of Sheringham since 1980.

Past and present colleagues, clients, and business associates, along with Mr Hedges’ family, gathered at a reception at The Pheasant Hotel in Kelling to mark the milestone.

A pupil at Paston Grammar School, he recalls that his careers master said “it would be a good idea if I left school, because he didn’t think I would get the required number of ‘O’ levels to progress to sixth form.”

In the event, Mr Hedges proved him wrong, but by then he had already accepted a job with Keys, where his first job was to put one of those ‘O’ levels to good use: drawing on his woodwork skills, he made a new window display for the Cromer office. 

Under the tutelage of his first boss Tony Bond, Mr Hedges learned quickly, and in 1980 became the firm’s youngest ever branch manager, taking over its Sheringham office at the tender age of 22 – a position he has now held for 44 years.

Despite huge advances in technology, he insists that estate agency remains a people business.

“When I started, there were no corporate agencies, the profession was made up of local firms staffed by local people, who really knew the market, and more importantly, the people in their community,” said Mr Hedges. 

“I have always tried to maintain that feel, and over the years I have played a part in many local families’ homes histories, selling the same houses three or four times, and selling homes to the same people as they moved up the property ladder.

“Despite technology changing the face of estate agency, it is still about having an encyclopaedic knowledge of the local market, and building those personal relationships.  In the end, estate agency is about people, not bricks and mortar, and no amount of technology will ever change that.”

Congratulating Mr Hedges on the significant career milestone, Arnolds Keys managing partner Nick Williams said, “Very few people achieve such a long and successful career, let alone with the same firm.

“There is no-one in north Norfolk who knows more about property than Clive, nor who understands the value of building and maintaining personal relationships.

“It is testament to his skills and loyalty that he continues not just to carve out a hugely successful career, but be held in such esteem by generations of house buyers and sellers in north Norfolk, in whose lives he has played such a part.”