Founded by English estate agent Howard Frank in 1896, Knight Frank is one of the world’s largest and best-respected real estate consultancies. The company took under 12 months to secure its first sale, achieving a price of GBP 270 for a cycle machinery and plant business in Battersea, London. It was to be the first of many.
By 1911, the company was making sales in the region of hundreds of thousands of pounds, listing property for many of the UK’s wealthiest and most high-profile individuals. Just a few years later, Knight Frank recorded its most notable sale to date, selling Stonehenge for GBP 6,600. Many more headline-grabbing sales followed, from Winston Churchill’s house to the Duke of Westminster’s Grosvenor Estate.
Before long, Knight Frank was advising on real estate developments, too. The company was enlisted to work on the site assembly for the BBC’s Broadcasting House in 1928 and to advise on the development of the London Olympic Village for the 2012 games. In the UAE, Knight Frank won the contract to sell 231 prime residential properties in the Royal Atlantis at Palm Jumeirah, Dubai.
In recent years, the company has become as well known for its indexes and reports as for its real estate services. The Knight Frank Global House Price Index, Country House Index, Prime Central London Index and annual Wealth Report are all used as benchmarks by prestigious organisations, institutions and industry leaders.
Today, Knight Frank is a global powerhouse with an operation spanning more than 20,000 staff across 488 offices in 57 territories. The company handles over USD 817bn worth of commercial, agricultural and residential real estate every year.
