14 The Times Magazine
He still remembers the night he became
an estate agent. He was cooking a steak at the
Food Plug. The customers were annoying him.
“I am a great chef, let me tell you,” he asserts.
“But I wasn’t happy. I couldn’t be myself. And
people see a guy trying his best but they keep
making extra demands.”
Moisii is good-looking and charismatic.
I can’t help wondering what these extra
demands were. “Salt, man. The customers
wanted extra salt or more sauce, but it was
too fast-paced an environment for these extra
demands. Eat what I give you.”
Moisii grew up in Palermo, Italy, and came
to the UK as a boy. He was expelled from
college for fighting and thrown out of the
family home when he was 16. “My dad said,
you wanna be a gangster, then go do that on
the street, but not here.”
He has made some bad decisions and been
in trouble. He won’t tell me exactly what. “I’m
quite an edgy guy, you know,” he says, flexing
his neck. Moisii is an unlikely luxury estate
agent. He wears rings on all his knuckles
and crucifix earrings in his left ear. When
the company first launched, Tyron Ash
was nervous that Moisii’s look might put
off clients. In one episode, a vendor looking
to sell a substantial property in Thrapston,
Northamptonshire, admits that when he saw
Moisii coming up the gravel to cold-call he
thought he was the “parcel guy”.
But Moisii says his look, his demeanour,
is part of the authenticity that a young
generation of property-buyers like. “I don’t
change nothing about myself,” he says. “And
when people see that I am real and consistent
and deliver on a promise, they get it.”
I love watching Moisii sell property. In
one episode a man arrives to view a £7 million
apartment with private river access in London
Bridge. This is a man of substance. Nevertheless
Moisii treats him like a guy bending the
magazines in a newsagents.
“I recommend you to love it or it’s gone,”
he says.
“Yeah, he does like an ultimatum, does
Alex,” chuckles Tyron Ash.
Moisii believes the ability to purchase
luxury goods says something about one’s
manhood. He tells me you are not a man until
you own a Rolex (he is wearing one). And
in one of his online property ads he stands
outside a country house, staring moodily into
the distance in sunglasses next to a vintage
Jag. The ad doesn’t even say anything about
how many bathrooms or bedrooms the
property has, just Moisii’s thoughts: “Too
many guys in the world. Be a man.”
What does that mean exactly?
“It means you have to have balls to buy a
luxury property. And to sell it. On the streets,
when you get in a fight, you know who you’re
fighting. In property, it’s more vicious.”
Tyron Ash’s gang is full of hungry hustlers.
He was one himself once. We meet in a coffee
shop near his Chelsea Harbour apartment.
He is a big guy with meticulous facial hair,
trimmed as close as the felt on a card table.
On his left lapel is a diamond badge in the
shape of a crown. Why?
“That tells you I’m the king of real
estate,” he says, his tone factual rather than
explanatory, like someone telling me today’s
date. We are the only proper punters in
the café. Everyone else is in a hard hat and
wearing a tool belt – the labour workforce
building more grand vistas of luxury. Ash and
his French bulldog, Rocky, live here among
the trucks and cement mixers. I mention
I’m not sensing a lot of local community.
“I reckon you’d be more of a Victorian
property guy,” he says.
Ash says he can divine a person’s property
preferences in a second. There are a lot of
“tells” – clues – he says. I think that means
I’m too old and scruffy for “super-prime”.
“This world is about new money,” he says.
“I sell to social media stars, tech entrepreneurs,
Premier League football players. I sold a
property to Jadon Sancho’s family recently.”
Ash likes it here. I visited his apartment
earlier and saw his vast collection of shoes
and trainers, his coffee-table book about
collectible watches, and his diamanté skull.
He has a £200,000 Lamborghini Huracán
parked in the garage below. “It’s already paid
for itself several times over. When I drive that
to an MA [market appraisal], clients know I’m
a serious player. Don’t look like you need a
loan; look like you own the bank.”
It’s a long way from his roots in Milton
Keynes where he grew up. His Pakistani
father, Maz, was an engineer for Rolls-Royce.
His Italian mother, Maria, worked for the
council. By 17 he had left school and was
working locally as an estate agent. He was
good at it, but didn’t feel his career was
progressing quickly enough. That’s when
he made a big mistake.
“I couldn’t get the finance to open my own
agency,” he says. “Angry and frustrated is a
bad combination for a young man, and I got
in with the wrong crowd.” On his right arm
there’s a tattoo that says “Only God Can
Judge Me”. In 2015, he found out that isn’t
strictly true. A judge judged him. Ash, then
known as Tyron Ashraf, received a 40-month
sentence for intent to supply class-A drugs.“It was cocaine, not a large amount but,
no excuses, I did it. It’s the most stupid thing
I have ever done.” He served 20 months, first
at HMP Woodhill in Milton Keynes, then
HMP Ranby in Nottinghamshire and finally
in an open prison. Open prison was the worst.
“At an open prison men have freedom to
socialise, but I preferred the safety of the cell
because I didn’t want to mix. My stance was,
‘Why socialise? I am ashamed to be here.’
I watched my dad cry in the visiting room,
and if that doesn’t wake you up nothing will.”
While in prison he trained as an electrician
and, on release, he tried making a go of it but
hated it. Luckily, an old friend from his estate
agent days got him a job at a firm called Fine
& Country. Ash began posting his properties
on social media and one month he earned
£28,000 in commission. “People would say,
‘Why are you acting like you’re a millionaire
on Insta?’ But I could see it was the future.”
By 2019 he’d ploughed his £100,
life savings into starting his own company.
Even without renting an office he had
to pay for access to property portals like
Rightmove and Zoopla, a CRM (customer
relationship management system), buying
insurance, a website and registration with
the property ombudsman.
“Six weeks in I was hungry and I had to
ask my mum for £5,000 so I could eat,” he
says. “There was no plan B. This had to work.”
Then, of course, the Covid-19 pandemic hit
and things looked grim. But when traditional
estate agents shut their offices, their
employees flocked to Ash’s online operation.
He recruited 40 agents in 6 weeks and they
went to work. Initially, they sold anything.
“We sold a house for 300 grand. Even a
garage at one point. But then in the summer
of 2020 I told them, ‘Go for luxury.’ ”
Now he has 65 agents in all, selling luxury
property all over the UK. “In Wales, luxury
can start at £500,000,” says Ash. “In London,
it can be anything up to £10 million.”
But the world of luxury property is
sometimes baffling. When one of his agents
shows off a £7 million apartment owned by
a billionaire in Kensington in London, the
highlight is an automated wooden cabinet
that rises up from a chest of drawers. It’s for
displaying a collection of luxury wristwatches.
A nice view, a fancy kitchen, those I can
drool over. But an automated wristwatch
cabinet feels too much. Isn’t some luxury a bit
pointless? “We live in a world of excess. No
one needs a watch display cabinet, but then
no one needs to go to Harrods or Selfridges
and bang ten grand on a credit card. But it
happens. Our clients like to show off. And our
job is to be a part of that performance.” nProperty Porn Stars will air on Channel 4
later this year‘WE ARE SHARKS AND
I DON’T SEE ANYTHING
WRONG WITH THAT TERM.
WE KEEP MOVING’