Daniel Daggers is not half as haughty as you might expect from someone who refers to himself as “Mr Superprime”. His expensive-looking pinstripe suit and Audemars Piguet watch belie the fact that on this cold winter morning, he is also the teaboy.
“Don’t worry, I’ve not forgotten you,” he says, pulling a bottle of water out of his pocket after dishing out the coffees to the rest of his team.
As his coat comes off, his estate agent hat goes on, estimating the ceiling heights and square footage of the first room on his tour of this £10 million, six-storey terraced house he is currently selling. Daggers, 46, is almost bouncing as he walks around.
“You need to be theatrical,” he explains. “This might be the 18th time I’ve been around this house, but it could be the first and only time you see it.”
Daggers is arguably the most famous estate agent in London, thanks to his short-lived Netflix series, Buying London, and his 100,000-plus followers on Instagram who gush over the property porn content he regularly pumps out.
The multimillion-pound homes he now sells, and the billionaires and celebrities he brushes shoulders with, are worlds away from his life growing up in a council house in north London.
“I wanted to be a professional footballer,” Daggers, a big Arsenal fan, recalls. “I grew up in local authority housing and knew nothing about fancy houses until I went to one of my friend’s, when I was seven or eight, and they had a much bigger house with a bigger garden. I asked mum: ‘Why don’t we have a bigger house?’”
He was, by his own admission, not particularly academic as a child, which he thinks could be down to undiagnosed dyslexia. After failing to get the grades to go to university, he did a general national vocational qualification (GNVQ) in business, as part of which he had to do a two-week placement at the local estate agents. Eventually, they offered him a full-time role.
“I was just desperate to earn money,” he says. “I remember I wanted to put a subwoofer in my bright blue Vauxhall Corsa because I love rap music.”
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Having money and financial security is clearly important to Daggers. He says he had “an amazing upbringing” and is still very close with his parents, but remembers that it “wasn’t always easy” for his father, a kitchen designer.
When his friends were leaving university in the late Nineties, they were taking graduate jobs in accounting or law firms and were getting paid £20,000 a year, sometimes more. Daggers was on £7,000 plus commission.
“That really hit me hard because when you’re young, you benchmark a lot. I remember saying to myself that I needed to be brilliant at my job, because then everyone else will know I’m brilliant and so I’ll be able to sell more expensive homes and earn more money.”
Inside a London home Daggers is selling for a client
LUCY YOUNG FOR THE TIMES
He got headhunted to work in Knight Frank’s “super prime” residential arm in November 2007, just before the global financial crash rocked the property market. New colleagues were being let go “left, right and centre”, but he managed to survive.
Daggers may not be the arrogant salesman some would expect, but he is certainly not afraid of discussing his achievements either. “It took me six months to really understand what I was doing [at Knight Frank], but I became the highest fee earner in that business and I remained the highest fee earner for 12 years.” Among the deals he worked on during his time there he brokered the sale of a £95 million Georgian home near Buckingham Palace to Kenneth Griffin, the US hedge fund billionaire.
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While Daggers has been building his social media following for more than a decade, it was his departure from Knight Frank at the end of 2019 that made headlines in the mainstream press.
He will not discuss his exit, saying he signed a non-disclosure agreement, but what was reported at the time was that a couple of Knight Frank’s wealthy clients had complained about him posting photos of their homes on Instagram without permission. It is still not clear if he left of his own accord or jumped before he was pushed.
“Let me just say one thing: I built my success on the trust that clients have in me and I would never harm a client. The top end of the market is about discretion, know-how, privacy.”
But is it possible to be an “influencer” on social media, sharing details of your professional and personal lives with any Tom, Dick or Harry, while at the same time remaining discreet and retaining your credibility with clients? Daggers insists that it is. If anything, he believes that being so active on Instagram and having his own television show actually encourages millionaires and billionaires to work with him.
“The ultra high net worth community will do everything to not deal with strangers,” he explains. “So I want as many people to know how serious I am about my job, how passionate I am and also a little bit of my personal life, because that builds trust. I have the most successful people on the planet DM [direct message] me on Instagram. It might sound crazy but everything goes down in the DMs.”
On the eve of the first lockdown, in March 2020, Daggers set up DDRE Global, his version of what a modern-day estate agency should look like. There are no high street branches because the world’s elite do not want to schlep to someone else’s office. DDRE (Daniel Daggers Real Estate), which now has more than 50 staff, sold a £15 million house recently in a deal that was finalised at the client’s gym.
“We work for our clients, not for their properties,” he says. Daggers sees it as his job to not just buy and sell houses, but to put his clients in touch with the best architects, security firms and lawyers should they need them. If a client is looking to buy or sell abroad, Daggers has made it his business to get to know the “top agents” in Los Angeles or Dubai or Miami. “In our world, there are lots of properties that you will never see on the open market, so you need to speak to people in the industry [to know about them].”
As you would expect from Mr Superprime, all new DDRE agents get help building their social media following. “It’s imperative to have a personal brand. It’s your gateway to success,” Daggers explains.
Inside a central London property Daggers is selling
LUCY YOUNG FOR THE TIMES
The top end of the housing market has struggled in recent years, not helped by changes to tax rules which have pushed out many wealthy people. Increased stamp duty costs have also sapped demand and dented “super prime” prices which, according to Savills, are now a fifth below their 2014 peak.
A number of Daggers’ friends and clients have upped sticks to Dubai or Milan, but he insists that London is still a popular place for the jetsetting elite, especially Americans, who see the UK as a “breath of fresh air”.
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“All of the ultra high net worth [individuals] I know want to be in London, and if they’ve left, they want every reason to come back. People love London. They love how green it is, the entertainment, the weather is mild, it’s well-connected; they like the rule of law here, the language, it’s relatively safe and wonderfully clean.
“I think it’s the best city in the world by a mile. We just need to get our shit together.”