RedBook launches new design service for buyers of trophy London apartments
A service dedicated to ensuring anyone who buys a luxury apartment in a new development can sleep easy knowing it will be decorated to suit their taste by their ideal interior designer, and the project will be managed to perfection? Sounds too good to be true. Sandy Mitchell, RedBook’s founding director, explains what makes the service work like a dream.
Imagine for a moment you have just succeeded in buying one of London’s finest flats in a new super-prime development overlooking Grosvenor Square, Chelsea or Hyde Park. You are in a hurry to move in. You need only to furnish and decorate the trophy apartment in your own style before you can do so. No problem there, you would think. Interior designers in the city are thicker on the ground than pigeons.
But here is the snag. How do you choose one designer from among so many and know they will be the perfect fit for you and how do you ensure you are being charged appropriately? The best designers are beyond busy just now, too. And there is an even bigger challenge, though it is less obvious as it is unique to new developments.
While always eager to give their buyers the best possible service after purchase, developers do not enjoy dealing with buyers’ interior designers and all the fuss that goes with their interiors projects. Frustrations can flare, delays to interiors projects pile up and project costs escalate. This explains why RedBook has created an exciting new service specifically for buyers of flats in the best new developments. It is called RedBook Inside. It is like an Aspirin, 100% effective for the headache buyers can face—and cause—with their interiors projects at these special properties.
RedBook Inside has two active ingredients. The first is RedBook’s tried, trusted and fast-acting process for understanding clients’ taste in interiors—and also their personality so that the right chemistry with interior designer can be achieved. Having advised on over 250 projects in the past decade, RedBook has succeeded every time in providing clients with exactly the right designer from our constantly updated stable of 75 world-leading designers. RedBook achieves the perfect match of client and designer by providing the client with 3 or more handpicked candidates to review and meet, then by analysing and benchmarking their fee proposals, so the clients can see how the designer’s fee compares and exactly how much they are going to be charged by the designer.
The second ingredient is just as critical. Having held the buyer’s hand in choosing the ideal designer, RedBook Inside provides the buyer with a specialist project manager—at RedBook’s own cost—to work alongside the chosen interior designer, and the developer, to ensure all the frictions are avoided.
Each of these project managers has worked previously for a developer at the top level in building super-prime residential schemes in the capital. So they know exactly how developers like to work. Thanks to their specialised professional experience, these project managers can also see through the myriad complexities of developers’ operating manuals, plumbing or electrical schemes and access restrictions. The result is that buyers can now make their new apartments into beautifully decorated and furnished homes, confident when they start the project that it will be delivered smoothly on time and on budget.
The cost to the buyer of the RedBook Inside service is just £2,800 + VAT. This covers the service from start to finish of a project and is the only fee the client pays.
Miles Wood, Sales Director at Qatari Diar, notes: “RedBook have been a huge asset to our buyers at Chelsea Barracks in providing access to their ideal interior designers and overseeing the fit outs of their new apartments”
Already, RedBook Inside is being used and enjoyed by buyers of penthouses and other prime apartments at the best of the newly completed or soon-to-be finished developments such as the Old War Office, Battersea Power Station, and Chelsea Barracks among others. And at penthouses with large outdoor spaces, RedBook Inside is also providing leading garden designers.
‘Having only recently and quietly launched the service, we have been delighted by the level of demand from clients,’ says Founding Director, Sandy Mitchell. ‘We are not completely surprised though, because the service is so tailored for them and answers all their problems.
Tom Mann, Director, Residential Development Consultancy, Savills, comments: “When advising our clients on how to design a super prime development scheme, a major challenge is offering discerning buyers something truly unique and personal. RedBook Inside creates the opportunity to do this, making it painless for developers. We can offer our purchasers the opportunity to have a truly bespoke residence, delivered by a best in class, thoroughly vetted team – and in the shortest time possible. For our developer clients, they can be in a position to offer a bespoke product, without having to alter their process or programme. To me, that creates a truly Super Prime offering.”
“RedBook have assisted a number of our buyers on various Super Prime schemes across Central London. Their service is unparalleled, and clients really do enjoy the journey whilst getting access to range of top tier design firms to choose from” Rupert des Forges, Partner at Prime Central London Developments, Knight Frank
