Super-prime mover: Britain’s most successful estate agent

He sold a house for a mind-boggling £215m. Gary Hersham has been selling houses to the very rich for decades. At first, £1m was a big deal. Now he sells properties for over 200x that amount. What does it take to stay on top in this cut-throat business? Sophie Elmhirst profiles the super-prime estate agent. Here, she explores how his fastidious and fast-paced nature has enabled him to get to the top of one of the most fierce industries and wonders whether a new era of social media entrepreneurs is looking likely. “This is Britain as brand: a commodification of a fractional way of life that required a townhouse, acreage, staff — and died between the wars. Never mind that there’s almost no one in this country who can remember or afford such an existence. Extremely rich people from other places adore it and want to recreate it, and the prime estate agents know how to sell it. You hear it in their language, the lexicon of heritage filling the Beauchamp Estates brochure: 'Steeped in history'; 'one of London’s finest addresses”; 'the heart of old Chelsea'. A slice of fictional England, a portal to aristocracy, yours for £10,000 a square foot.”