12 The Times Magazineyron Ash remembers that first
salvo of abuse, the insults that
confirmed his business was heading
in the right direction. The first
Twitter DM (direct message) he
received said, “You’re shits.” The
second said, “Flash f***er.” Other
comments from fake accounts
added racial slurs.
“Those first messages were
from senior directors of big estate agents. But
you know what, I didn’t blame them. People
lash out when they’re scared and, trust me,
we were eating these people alive.”
In his big coat and Gucci slippers, 33-year-
old Ash might look like a financier straight out
of a Succession storyline. In fact, he’s an estate
agent working in what he calls the “luxury
super-prime” market. Early in 2020, his new
business only a few months old, his rivals
rounded on him. They were upset at how he
was disrupting the game. “They were angry
because we knocked on their clients’ doors
whenever we saw a ‘for sale’ sign and told the
owners, ‘Your current agent is lazy. We’ll sell
this property for you. Guaranteed.’ ”
Ash doesn’t run an expensive office or
print glossy brochures. Instead he simply
“cold-calls” at his rivals’ listings. If they
agree to give him a chance he makes a
cinematic sales video, posts it on social
media and then arranges highly competitive
open-house viewings where on-the-spot
deals are encouraged.
Within 18 months he claims to have
wrenched £300 million worth of sales from
established players such as Knight Frank,
Savills and Hamptons.
“It feels better when you take business
away from someone else. We are sharks and
I don’t see anything wrong with that term. It
has bad connotations, but we are lean and we
keep moving. I can handle abuse. It means
we’re winning. People don’t like us, who
gives a f***?”
Tyron Ash and his sharks are the subject
of a new Channel 4 series, Property Porn
Stars. Like the Netflix hit Selling Sunset, it
documents the lives and lifestyles of those
selling in the luxury property market. But
while Selling Sunset follows various Playboy
and Sports Illustrated models-turned-estate
agents, people almost indistinguishable from
the Los Angeles A-list they serve, Ash’s UK
agents are different.
His team may rock the bespoke suits,
frocks, nails, hair and teeth of the super-
wealthy but they are working class, with
none of the entitlement of their Californian
cousins. “There’s an authenticity to what
we do,” says Ash. “For old money, we can
be too much. But we work with new money- a younger generation who respect how
real we are.”
In the opening credits, see Ash raise two
middle fingers and a triumphant “f*** you”
to the world as £75,000 in commission rolls in.
Marvel as former gang-member Quas Miah
cold-calls a man on the doorstep of his north
London mansion.
“Mate, are you selling your ass?” he calls
out. Of course he means “house”, but Miah
wears his East End roots proudly.
More than anything, Property Porn Stars
shows us just how much money Tyron Ash’s
crack team of “super-prime” are managing
to rake in. Take the example of Alex Moisii,
33, a Romanian/Italian firebrand and the
company’s top “closer”. Two years ago he was
a chef at a takeaway in Northamptonshire.
Last year he earned more than £200,
in commission.
Then there’s 20-year-old Chloe Cable, who
used to work in a nail bar on the south coast
but is now a partner in the firm. The video
walk-throughs she posts on social media (in
black thigh boots and miniskirt, she executes
a slow-mo catwalk strut through her clients’
living rooms to a hip-hop soundtrack) helped
her earn more than £100,000 in the past year.
And then there’s Sophie Leigh, 27, a sport
nut and former personal trainer who became
an estate agent after suffering an injury
playing American football. “I am not cut out
for 9-5. I came to work for Tyron to make
money and have an adventure,” she says.
I meet them at a £3 million penthouse in
Chelsea Harbour, west London, one of the
company’s listings. This two-bedroom home
boasts 360-degree living-room views and
benefits from marble floors and a spacious
outside deck with hot tub.
So much for standard estate agent blather.
To get the full effect you have to watch Sophie
Leigh’s social media film. As she stalks through
the penthouse to Kanye West’s Praise God,
the property ad becomes a hip-hop video. In
other promo clips, Leigh dives into her clients’
swimming pools or does back-flips on their
garden trampoline. “We are performers to an
extent,” she says. “Younger buyers particularly
love seeing us pull up in a supercar, dive in the
pool or lie on the bed.”
Leigh’s American football knee injury was
so bad she says she needed a “skinny BBL”
to cheer herself up. I thought it was a drink
from Starbucks. It isn’t. A BBL is a “Brazilian
bum lift”, a surgical procedure enhancing the
volume and projection of the buttocks. “My
knee injury compromised my ability to shape
my glutes. The BBL gave me confidence,
which you need in this business,” she says.
Tyron Ash agrees. “To sell a pad for a
million you have to look a million,” he says,
fiddling with his tie clip. Do you have to be
beautiful to sell super-prime? “Unconventional
looks can sometimes work,” he says with a
shrug. “As long as you can sell.”All his agents are gym-toned, good-looking
and smell nice. Ash and Moisii are in Gucci
slippers, bespoke suits and, quite daring for
grimy London, white overcoats. Cable and
Leigh look as if they’re waiting to board a
superyacht. “The secretary look is not good
enough for luxury sales,” says Cable. “And
buyers get a bit anxious if you turn up with a
carrier bag. You have to make them feel this is
a world you’re comfortable in.”
While Ash tells me he took 30 calls from
TV production companies wanting to make a
programme about his firm, Cable handles a call
from a stressed seller. Her husband is worried
about complications with “the chain”. “You have
to be available 24 hours a day and you become
their therapist,” she says when the call ends.
“The men often get more stressed about a sale
than the women, but they make her call.”T
Clink Wharf, London, sold for £5.7 millionPoole, Dorset, £2.75 millionBursteads Barn, Hertfordshire, £4 millionCRACKIT PRODUCTIONS/CHANNEL 4