Mine's a skinny latte - and I'll have an apartment, too, please

A residential property consultancy has opened one of the first estate agency coffee shops in the UK. 

Go Holdings, which works with companies on land acquisition, design, construction and sales, is branching into formal estate agency having purchased a shop - formerly a Colourmax printers outlet - at Hertford in Hertfordshire. 

“The unit has been completely stripped out. We’ve built a coffee bar and an estate agent bar, too, in the shop and there is a further part where you will find an office” explains Ed Casson, who is in charge of the project.

The firm has a team of three estate agents and five baristas working seven days a week. 

The shop operates 7am until 7pm Monday to Friday, from 8am to 5pm on Saturday and 10am to 3pm on Sunday.

“There’s a coffee bar menu like any other coffee shop and next to our estate agency bar, you’ll find a menu - to comply with legislation - with the fees for our estate agent services in the same style as the coffee shop menu” he adds. 

“On top of all of this, we have a large touch screen in one of the large front windows and have also built a virtual reality room in our back office where we will be showing properties we are marketing for sale and rent, virtually through a headset.”

The agency - to be known as Go Move - is already marketing itself via a website and says it is offering £1,000 cashback upon completion on instructions received before October 1.

This isn’t the first agency to operate in tandem with a coffee shop - even leaving aside the Foxtons-style redesign of agency branches to look like coffee shops.

UrPad, which has two offices in Bristol, opened a third during last autumn in the Route 2 cafe in Topsham, an estuary town on the edge of Exeter in Devon; it was a success although UrPad has now moved into an office of its own elsewhere in Topsham.