Foxtons chose to sponsor the Residential Personality of the Year category at this year’s Property Awards, as great people are at the heart of our business and recognising achievements across the industry provides inspiration for the next generation of property experts.

As London’s largest sales, lettings and property management agent, Foxtons is uniquely placed to appreciate the massive diversity in the many communities of such a truly global city. We believe the only way to properly attend to the needs and values of all these communities is to recruit and retain an equally diverse workforce. This has been a core principle across our 40 year history, and our success is reflected recently in our Diversity and Inclusion Award 2020 win.

Within our business, our Diversity and Inclusion networks welcome, support and educate our people to help keep the momentum on issues that garnered our awareness during lockdowns. Our training for managers ensures we continue to build our diverse employee network. As people are trained, championed and promoted, they bring in different perspectives, helping us achieve an overall healthier property sector that can stand up to the challenges of the coming years.

As trends have developed in the London property market this past year, they affected different communities in unequal measure. A lot of talk has come since the pandemic’s height about “building back better,” a fervour for changing the harmful aspects of our society, now that we’ve seen the effects in an emergency situation. But we cannot lose this motivation.

We’ve focused our support on social mobility for young people in the communities we serve, through our partnership with Career Ready, our Youth Verified status and our commitment to the Social Mobility Pledge.

Milestone anniversaries provide an opportunity to look back and think forward. This is the 10th anniversary for the RESI Awards and the 40th anniversary for Foxtons. In the last 40 years, the last decade and even just the last twelve months, the property market has gone through incredible shifts. Events like general elections, Brexit and Covid-19 have made for an increasingly volatile sales market in recent years. Lettings are swiftly professionalising, driven by the rise in institutional landlords and increased regulatory and compliance requirements. Looking at the companies and people in this year’s RESI Awards, it is encouraging to see so many innovative minds and new strategies, ready to rise amid our sector’s future growth and transformation.