Where it began
Adam opens Horton Estate Agents in his hometown of Leicester, offering a true personal agent service with a single point of contact.
Our story
One person, accountable from start to finish.
Hortons began with a frustration every estate agent recognises, and a first business that got one thing badly wrong.
2010 · The problem
The valuer makes the promise. Then disappears.
Adam started in estate agency in 2010 and fell for it quickly: the pace, and working with people at one of the most important moments of their lives.
Just as quickly, he saw where the traditional model lets clients down. A valuer sits in the living room and promises one thing. Then delivery depends on several other people, often people the client has never met.
When that chain breaks, the client no longer knows who is in the driving seat. The person they bought into has gone.
The traditional model
- Valuer
- Negotiator
- Sales progressor
- Whoever picks up
The personal agent
- One agent, from valuation to completion
“I thought this could be transformed if clients just had a single point of accountability. So that's what I set out to do.”
Adam Horton
2013 · Hortons V1
Age 20. A first business. One expensive mistake.
Adam launched a personal agent service built on a single point of accountability. It took off quickly in its local market. Then it hit a wall.
What worked
People loved having the same person from start to finish.
It was the main reason clients chose to instruct. They weren't recommending a company. They were recommending their agent.
The mistake
Pairing a personal service with a fixed fee.
Purplebricks was about to launch and online agents were making noise, so competing on price felt logical. But a fixed fee needs volume, and volume destroys a personal service.
The takeaway
Keep the single point of contact. Change the structure.
Give great agents the tools to offer that service themselves, as their own business, on a traditional fee. The client pays what they would on the high street and gets something better.
Hortons today
A platform for agents. No loser in the room.
That insight became Hortons as it is now: a platform experienced agents join, going self-employed in the process, with everything they need to offer a single point of contact service to their own clients.
We were one of the UK's very first brokerages for self-employed estate agents, and we've become one of the industry's most respected. Not through scale, but through quality: of our agents, our team and our brand.
We've been purposeful about how we've grown and who has joined us. That's because we've been led by our values.
Timeline
Built to last, not to scale fast.
Word spreads
Boards begin appearing across Leicester as people hear about a more personal way to move home.
The brokerage model arrives
The business relaunches as Hortons, bringing the brokerage model as we know it today to UK estate agency for the first time.
The first partners
Hortons expands across Leicestershire as the first agents join as partners.
Recognition
The Leicester Mercury Start-Up Award, the first of many business and industry awards.
Backing for growth
Private equity funding from Dunelm Partners to accelerate national expansion.
Going national
Hortons launches in Oxfordshire, the West Midlands and Northamptonshire.
Growing from within
Maisie Spencer, who joined as a phone operative, becomes Operations Director and leads the rollout of the agent network.
Today
More than 40 territories across the UK, and growing with care.
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Our manifesto
A lot of businesses talk about values. Very few live them.
Mission
To help everyone find where they feel at home.
For buyers and sellers, that's obvious. It applies to our agents too. Being a Hortons agent means belonging to something, alongside like-minded people. Home is more than bricks and mortar.
Vision
A trusted Hortons agent in every community.
That means full national coverage, one day. We're comfortable not rushing it, and we won't trade our values to get there sooner.
Integrity
We look for high-integrity agents first. Clients need an agent they can trust to give straight advice.
Creativity
In the work itself, and in how problems get solved. Thinking outside the box is part of the job.
Entrepreneurship
Every partner took a risk and left the comfort of a high-street job to pursue something more.
Caring
About clients, and about the craft. You have to care deeply to become the best-known agent in your area.
- 01
Progress over perfection
We strive to do our best work, but we don't let it hold us back. We iterate, learn from mistakes and keep moving.
- 02
Radical transparency
With each other, and with clients. We tell people the truth, even when it means losing a listing in the short term.