150 and counting

John D. Wood & Co celebrates its 150th anniversary this year and one way the agents are marking the occasion is by using a commemorative logo featuring the handwriting of founder John Daniel Wood.

The first office opened in London at 6, Mount Street, Mayfair, in 1872 and later HQS include Berkeley Square and Chelsea Green, where the estate agent’s longest-serving employee, with 48 years, Andy Buchanan, still works. There are now 28 offices across London and the South of England, plus 3,000 international affiliates, and landmark sales have included Dorchester House on Park Lane, Leeds Castle in Kent and the National Sporting Club in Covent Garden, which played a seminal role in establishing boxing as a sport in Britain. Today, John D. Wood is renowned for handling sales for a client base that prefers to transact anonymously, with an average of 28% of sale properties listed as off-market. ‘Nobody keeps a secret like John D. Wood & Co,’ quips a private client. The estate agent also made a bold move last year in making its entire fleet of company vehicles electric—among the first in the industry to do so.

‘Our values, high standards and first-class levels of service remain at the forefront of our approach,’ comments managing director Polly Ogden Duffy, who considers John D. Wood clients ‘clients for life’.