About the firm
We started because a landlord asked what it cost and I was told not to answer
Marchmont has published its full fee schedule on the front page of its website since the day it opened in 2011. That was unusual then. Fifteen years and 412 managed properties later, it is still unusual, which tells you something about the trade.
Fifteen years on Chandos Road
Ines Hollis spent eight years at a corporate agency in the city centre, the last two of them as a lettings manager. The instruction that finished it was a training note telling valuers not to quote percentages on the telephone, because a landlord who hears a number before they see the property is a landlord who compares.
She took the lease on 14 Chandos Road in the spring of 2011 — a former bookbinder's with a shopfront and a back office — and put the fee schedule in the window on the first morning. The first three instructions came from landlords who had walked past and read it.
The office has not moved. The counter is the bookbinder's original, and the ledger the firm's fees were first written into is still on the shelf behind it, which is where the name of everything on this website comes from.
We manage 412 properties across BS1 to BS16 with a team of nine. We have turned down portfolios that would have taken us past what three property managers can actually inspect twice a year, and we would rather keep doing that than become the kind of agency this one was started to get away from.
“A fee you have to ring up to discover is a fee somebody has decided you should not compare. We would rather lose the instruction on the website than win it in the hallway.”Ines Hollis, founder — from the firm's terms of business, 2011
Where we work
A twelve-mile radius, and we mean it
Managed lettings only work if somebody can be at the property. We take instructions inside a twelve-mile radius of the office and decline outside it — including, twice a year, from landlords we would like to keep.
BS1 · BS2 · BS3 · BS5 · BS6 · BS7 · BS8 · BS9 · BS10 · BS16
Redland, Cotham, Clifton, Bishopston, Montpelier, Bedminster, Southville, Horfield, Henleaze, Fishponds and the streets between them.
The stock we let
Ordinary Bristol housing, honestly photographed
We photograph properties empty and in daylight, and we do not use a wide lens to make a room look like a different room. A tenant who feels misled at the viewing is a void you pay for twice.
The firm, in figures
Fifteen years, counted
Accreditations, in full
Every scheme we belong to, with the number
You can check all four of these without asking us. We would encourage it — an agency that will not give you its CMP number is telling you something.
Come and look at the ledger
The office is open, and so are the books
14 Chandos Road, Monday to Friday, nine to six. You are welcome to walk in without an appointment and ask what anything costs. Somebody will tell you, out loud, in the doorway if you like.