1979-1982 B.Sc Land Management at Leicester Polytechnic (now De Montfort University)
I spent three years studying residential and commercial property management, development, construction, surveying, valuation, and marketing etc. I qualified with all I needed to become a Chartered Surveyor.
1982-1988 Estate Agent
Volume Residential Sales in Leicester, Greater London, West Midlands and the South West culminating in managing offices for Black Horse Agencies then running my own estate agency for 18 months . This diverse work experience set me up perfectly for my later career – I learnt the intricacies of inclusive advertising, chargeable advertising, up front fees, disbursements, multiple agency, half-comms, joint agency, auctions etc. I also did a fair bit of lettings, property management plus building society surveys, housebuyers reports. In 1984, I started to dabble with computer databases. I wrote my first estate agency application in dBase II and ran it on an Amstrad PCW. Several estate agent friends expressed interest in using my software and I started to plan my own business
1988-2003 GMW Systems
I set up GMW Systems, my one-man software company, in Sept 1988. I launched my GMW System4 Sales software which was almost the first desktop PC estate agency software. I wrote it myself in Foxbase on an Amstrad PC in the evenings then sold and supported both it and the hardware to run it during the working day. In the mid ’90s, Microsoft Windows was starting to dominate the business computer space so I knuckled down and wrote a new Windows compatible version of GMW System4 using Foxpro for Windows in the mid ’90s and remarkably it became the UK’s most widely used agency software – in use in over 2000 branches. By 2000, I had a staff of 14 including 2 full time developers who took over the task of creating and improving our products. We even created Property-Sight.co.uk one of the very first property portal websites which launched 6 months before Rightmove.
In September 200 I was lucky enough to sell GMW Systems to Aviva’s fledgling Rightmove competitor called asserta home. I was made asserta home’s commercial director for a while but relinquished this to focus on the software. I stayed until the end of my earn-out in 2003.
2004-2017 Expert Agent
I started and funded Expert Agent and, joined by Pete, Tom, Dave, Steve, Marcus, Neil and later Barbara, developed Expert Agent into a £4m pa turnover business supplying cloud based estate agency and letting agency software to over 2500 estate agency branches on a SaaS model, long before that term was invented. We also created over 1000 estate agency websites on what was then a unique but now much copied subscription model. Again, we became the most widely used product in the UK and we won the ESTAS “supplier of the year” award so many times running that they changed the categories and the rules. We sold to private equity in 2013 and I stayed on. They sold to Zoopla in 2017 and I didn’t stay on! I’ve very proud that Expert Agent is still going strong in 2025 with many of the original team still in place. Sadly, the product hasn’t been allowed to develop much since I left.
2017- Independent Software Consultant
I work as an independent software consultant, leveraging my unrivalled knowledge of the estate agency software space.
I advise small to medium sized estate agency businesses on how to get the best out of their existing software.
I help estate agency businesses work out their requirements for new software then I create and submit tender requests to the software companies, negotiating hard for the best deal.
I also advise software companies working in the estate agency space. I advise on strategy, marketing, documentation, support and product functionality. I’ve worked for Rightmove, Zoopla, and several well known estate agency focused software companies over the last 8 years. I have a deep understanding of estate agency and letting agency workflow, processes and functional requirements which I can quickly translate into wireframes and specifications for software developers. I’m also very good at assessing a product’s current functionality against typical estate agencies’ needs – saving the need for expensive user acceptance testing. My technical and development background allows me to effectively and efficiently interact between clients and software engineers in order to deliver great products.