Meet the Not-For-Profit Estate Agent
Public opinion of estate agents isn’t great. Many think of them as out to make as much money as possible by cheating sellers, tricking buyers and instigating rental bidding wars.
These sorts of opinions were top of mind for Stefi Orazi when setting up her online-only estate agent, Modernist Estates.
What started in 2013 as a Tumblr blog showcasing post-war housing schemes, Modernist Estates now connects homeowners with tenants and holiday makers interested in architecturally impressive homes. Last year, it started listing properties for sale, too.
It is also, unusually for an estate agent, run as a not-for-profit company.
“I wanted to do it differently,” Orazi explains. “Estate agents have got this reputation. The industry [doesn’t] come across very well, and that’s something I feel uncomfortable with.”
“I became quite obsessed about finding these different estates I didn’t know about and the architects behind them”
Modernist Estates charges a flat £450 fee to list a property for rent, and doesn’t take a monthly commission. On sales, it takes a fairly standard 1.5% commission, with 10% of that donated to affordable housing initiatives. For a £600,000 property, for example, this means £900 of the overall £9,000 fee would be donated. “When people come to me, they know that some of that fee is going to go somewhere good,” says Orazi. The rest covers the work of Orazi and her collaborator Christian Eldershaw, who runs his own agency and used to work at The Modern House, another estate agent specialising in modernist properties, which includes professional photography, researching and writing property descriptions, and marketing the listing.
The service is also much more curated than a traditional estate agent. Lets are advertised to Modernist Estates’ 12,000 newsletter subscribers and on social media, although portals like Rightmove are used to market sales. Descriptions are well researched, and photography emphasises design details.
While the not-for-profit approach alone won’t return homes to affordability, it removes incentives for landlords to increase rents by charging a flat, one-off fee instead of collecting a monthly percentage as most estate agents do. Modernist Estates’ plan to support affordable housing projects is also a nod to the fact many properties considered architecturally desirable today were once part of a now-dwindling stock of public housing. According to the Community Land Trust Network, as many as 278,000 affordable homes could be built with the right level of financial support.
Estate agent isn’t a label Orazi had planned to wear, and the Modernist Estates blog initially showcased properties she’d seen on her own search to buy something on one of London’s post-war housing schemes.
“I became quite obsessed about finding these different estates I didn’t know about
and the architects behind them. I began interviewing people that lived on [them],” she says. A community grew around the project: 60,500 people follow The Modernist Estates Instagram account.
In 2017, several subscribers hoping to find tenants among her audience for their own properties convinced her to advertise rentals. The business expanded from there.
Modernist Estates’ selective approach means it’ll likely stay small — it's not interested in taking on every property. Orazi wanted to make sure the business wouldn’t overshadow her other projects, which include designing books, working on architectural tours and, naturally, posting about cool buildings on social media.