newhomesagents
Special Agent
by Bridget Cordy This month:
IAN BOVINGDON Regional land & new homes partner, Sequence
Closing a deal doesn’t come quicker and slicker than on a market stall, which is just where Ian Bovingdon honed his negotiation skills as a teenager. Bovingdon, who now oversees land and new homes for Sequence in the east and central Midlands, started earning his pocket money by getting up at 5.30am to deliver papers aged 11 and later progressed to the market. “At senior school I was working on a market stall at weekends where I liked the market trading banter and the face to face deals,” says Bovingdon. After reading business studies at
university, it was while looking for work to pay for a trip to Australia that he spotted a job in estate agency at Taylors in Milton Keynes. “Agency sounded exciting and I worked there from 8am to 8pm on commission only,” he says. “It turned out to be a very exciting time with
over in Cambridge where I was running residential offices.” After Connells took over Sequence, Bovingdon seized his chance to head up the Land & New Homes team for East Anglia and took up the reins at the beginning of 2005. “When the market became tighter I
picked up a further area so had four or five centres across the region,” says Bovingdon, who is based in Ely. “A fair bit of time is spent on the road being out meeting clients. It would drive me mad sitting at a desk all day.”
Bovingdon describes his management style as ‘a bit of everything’: “My personal philosophy is always doing what I promise, on time, and beyond expectations. You can’t operate without systems. I put in systems for my staff to thrive and succeed. As managers they should manage and we are always open for new ideas
“My personal philosophy is always doing what I promise, on time, and beyond expectations”
great camaraderie. With Milton Keynes being developed on our doorstep we set up a separate new homes department. The boom times came and we all did very well.” Bovingdon worked his way up the
ranks until the housing market changed and redundancies followed. So he set off for the south coast and spent two years in another region of the Taylors group at Southampton where he opened up new branches for them and met his wife, Emma. “We moved to East Sussex which is a lovely part of the world, before returning to my home patch of Milton Keynes and finally joining Connells
so everyone can contribute to the overall business.” Although marketing ideas and
initiatives may be evolving rapidly, Bovingdon is not entirely swept away by online panaceas: “Digital marketing brings great visibility to our brands and the potential to reach people is incredible. With something like Twitter a quick message is a good opportunity to build a profile. But to be honest, business relationships are so much better face-to-face.” Through building client relationships Bovingdon has gained a greater understanding of their
requirements. “There’s a much greater emphasis on partnership with developers, offering market research and data as well as managing digital media. A lot of developers do not realise the amount of data that we have, which can help them make the right decisions. We’ve got it all at the touch of a button.” Sequence also has dedicated new
homes teams in specialist centres adjoining some of the group’s 300 residential branches. Each team is responsible for 15 to 20 residential offices, working with them to win new business and training them to sell the clients’ properties. “We trade off the strongest of our
11 brand names wherever we’re operating, such as William H Brown, Barnard Marcus or Fox & Sons and our dedicated land teams give us another advantage. I love new homes and I wouldn’t go back to general residential now.”
Bovingdon’s wife Emma is a sales director for a regional housebuilder, so property runs in the family. “I’d recommend that my son goes into property development but our daughter is more interested in drama,” he says of their two
teenagers. “Naturally we will support them in anything they choose to do, as long as they don’t chop and change. While they’ll get out what they put in, it’s important to give things a bit of a go.” The family tries to time holidays around Christmas due to the nature of their work, with exotic destinations topping the list. “I like to travel the world to see different cultures,” says Bovingdon. “I loved Oman, where my sister lived, and Vietnam and Cambodia. Emma will usually sit on a beach and I’ll be around the mountain taking photos. “Of course, you also have to learn to play golf as a land man, it’s just trying to find the time,” he says. As a Formula 1 fan he’s been to Silverstone for the past 30 years and hopes to be at the British Grand Prix again this June. In what little spare time is left,
Bovingdon coaches an U14 football team, but his main sporting passion is skiing. “I also used to be a keen jet skier and was ranked second in the UK and third in Europe which was good fun.” There’s a definite sense that
Bovingdon is competitive, both in work and play.
showhouseMay 2013 | 33
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