Portico
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The agency

Independent, and structurally so.

No franchise, no regional targets, no head office with opinions. The people who value your house are the people who answer its phone.

Twenty-two years on the same parade

Janet Portway opened Portico in 2003 with a filing cabinet, a kettle and a conviction that this trade’s problem was never the houses — it was the habit of telling sellers what wins the instruction rather than what is true. Her daughter Anna runs sales now; Marcus Deane has run lettings since 2011. Nine of us work here, every one of them would be recognised by name in half the cafés in town, and the fee has been on the website since before that was fashionable. We sell about 140 homes a year and manage 260 tenancies, which is as big as we ever intend to be: it is the size at which the person who valued your house still notices when it completes.

The people who answer the phone

“We are not the cheapest agency in Harrogate and we are not trying to be. We are trying to be the one whose board means the house is actually sold.”
Janet Portway · founder
The reputation, in their words

Every review names its street. Harrogate is a small town; we could not fake these if we wanted to, which is rather the point.

RA
Ruth and David Calder
Sold on Studley Road · bought in Knaresborough
Google

Eleven days between the board going up and the offer we accepted, and we heard from Janet after every single viewing — including the couple who hated the kitchen, which is exactly what we needed to hear.

ME
Margaret Ellison
Sold a four-bed on the Duchy estate, 2025

Two corporate agencies valued it £40,000 higher to win the instruction and I nearly fell for it. Portico priced it honestly, we had three offers in a fortnight, and it sold £8,000 over asking. The arithmetic speaks for itself.

TF
Tom Featherstone
Landlord, four properties on their fully managed service
Google

The quarter I moved my flats to Portico, the inspection reports started arriving without my chasing, with photographs. When the boiler on Cold Bath Road went at Christmas, the first I heard of it was the invoice for the fix.

SH
Sophie Hartley
First-time buyer, Mayfield Grove

I was nobody’s priority — a first-timer with a small deposit. Portico rang me back anyway, told me straight what my money bought in each postcode, and found me the flat that wasn’t on the portals yet.

The next board

It starts with a person on your doorstep.

A free valuation is forty minutes, in writing, and obliges you to nothing. The kettle on is traditional but not contractual.
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Valuations six days a week · Evenings by arrangement