ESTATE agency buyouts are all the rage these days but anything happening in Dublin is very small potatoes compared to London where earlier this week a price of £390 million (€575 million) was paid for Foxtons, the largest estate agency in the city.

It was bought by a private equity group, netting Foxtons founder and owner virtually all the cash. One person with a particular interest in the sale was none other than Mark FitzGerald, head of Dublin's biggest estate agency who is building up his own estate agency business in London. Two years ago he got control of Marsh & Parsons, a small select group concentrated in areas like Notting Hill and Chelsea. He installed one Peter Rollings as his MD, a good move given that Rollings had spent years helping to build up the very same Foxtons. The sale has focused attention on the relative value of Marsh & Parsons which has been trading exceptionally well in London's red hot market. However, the question is how long can it last. The Foxtons sale raised the question in the business pages as to whether Hunt was getting out at the peak of the market.

Foxtons' glitzy reputation had suffered of late with one rival once describing its high-pressure tactics as "hideous". Last year the UK business featured in a BBC undercover programme that suggested underhand sales practices. (Shock horror, couldn't happen here!) The programme alleged that the company used fake documents to inflate prices and put forward false offers to sellers. Foxtons denied any wrongdoing but acknowledged that three members of staff had quit and that a fourth had been retrained. Foxtons has since signed up to the industry's voluntary ombudsman code.