Kate Avery MRICS and Louise Avery MRICS. Photography by Michael Leckie. Hair and makeup by Laura Flynn.
Louise and Kate Avery were once told that they could run a small country.
In fact, the formidable family duo run Avery & Co, a firm of residential chartered surveyors based in north-west England. It is one of many family-owned firms that are the cornerstone of the UK surveying industry.
This year marks Avery & Co’s 21st anniversary, and over the decades it’s weathered major market shifts, a global financial crash and COVID-19 to become a firmly established surveying brand. For Louise and Kate (both MRICS), their success stems from their sense of family, a parent and daughter bond that enables collaboration and provides mutual strength and support. “I don’t think we’d have done it without each other,” says Avery & Co director Kate.
Today the Liverpool-based company specialises in the survey and valuation of residential property and operates across the north-west of England and North Wales. It works with homeowners and buyers as well as corporate clients from mortgage lenders to social landlords.
The firm currently employs 14 staff, including five other surveyors and is recruiting more. Alongside the business, the duo organises a national CPD conference annually for 120 surveying colleagues, while Louise has helped draft sections of the RICS Valuation – Global Standards UK National Supplement and sits on RICS’ expert group on the home survey standard.
There is something special about family-owned businesses and Avery & Co is no exception to this. The two live around the corner from each other and are, as managing director Louise says, “always together”. Kate describes them as “balancing each other out”, taking on specific tasks in the business without ever having to discuss it. They finish each other’s sentences while subtly appreciating one another’s strengths and accomplishments; Louise’s drive to do the best and Kate stepping up to become a director just as the pandemic hit.
They’re honest that running a business together is hard. “You’re eating your dinner at night and you’re still talking about it,” Louise says. “If it’s good you share successes, but if you have challenges that will affect the family environment.” Kate adds: “When you’re talking to a family member, you’re going to be a bit more honest. You don’t really hold back, and sometimes that’s a good thing, sometimes it’s a bad thing.”
“You don’t really hold back, and sometimes that’s a good thing, sometimes it’s a bad thing” Kate Avery MRICS, Avery & Co
“I don’t think we’d have done it without each other” Louise Avery MRICS, Avery & Co
A changing business landscape
The two have navigated a fair few challenges along the way. “One of the hardest things about business is just adapting,” says Kate. “It constantly changes and it’s never really steady.” Indeed Avery & Co bears little resemblance to its beginnings back in 2004, when Louise, who qualified in 1990, set up alone as a consultant valuer. “I didn’t really have a vision,” Louise recalls. “I think it was more about freedom, I wanted to work for myself and have more control over what I did.”
Louise navigated the financial crash in 2008/09 describing it as a “terrible time” and when work began to dry up, she decided to volunteer as a special constable, joining Merseyside Police. “I thought I could spend some of my extra time putting a bit back into the community,” Louise says. She rose through the ranks to become an inspector, supervising 80 officers and it’s here she says that she learned a lot about how to respectfully manage people.
She resigned six years later when the pressures of running Avery & Co and family life become too great. During this time Kate was growing up and remembers accompanying Louise to inspections in the school holidays.
When the market started to pick back up in 2012, Louise was offered a panel appointment providing mortgage valuations for a major lender, which heralded a huge increase in work. As a sole practitioner she’d often felt lonely, so she looked up her former surveyor colleagues who had semi-retired after the financial crash.
“One of them was stacking shelves in a supermarket,” she recalls. She asked them to come on board and suddenly she had a team. “It was very attractive for me at the time,” Louise says. “You’ve got people working around you who have the same objectives, the same worries, and the same need to do the best job you can. I’ve always wanted to make sure if I do something, I do it properly and that’s very important for the people who work with us as well.”
It is these shared professional values and the bonds they create that still run through the ethos of Avery & Co today. “People join our business, and they do stay,” says Kate. “We do everything to support them, and I know they do the same for us.” She points to long-term colleague Paul Riding FRICS, a surveyor and auditor who trained Louise early in her career, then joined Avery & Co and helped train Kate. “Paul’s role has been to bring out our values, our vision for the business and our standards. And he’s helped us enormously,” says Louise.
An unexpected career choice
It was through these professional bonds that Kate’s interest in surveying was piqued. By 2012 she was at university studying for a degree in geography and had joined the firm helping with admin as a side job to earn money. “It was never really something I had considered as a career,” she recalls. But then she started going out on inspections with Avery’s team of older, experienced surveyors. “They were teaching me things, and I thought I do quite like this, it’s interesting.”
Kate completed a postgraduate degree qualifying as a surveyor and valuer in 2017 and completed her APC to become a chartered surveyor in 2023. During this time, Kate worked hard to pivot the company away from mortgage lender valuations to working more directly with home buyers. “This is where the model of the business is now,” says Louise. “It’s a totally different business.”
One of their biggest challenges and their proudest achievement came during the pandemic. In February 2020, Kate had jumped into the role of director to run the business alongside Louise. Then a month later the first COVID-19 lockdowns happened and the industry and the world ground to a halt. Kate had the uncertainty of a new role, her own daughters, who were four and one at the time, and the existential pressures of life during lockdown. She says she learned a lot, quickly. “I juggled every role across the business, as did Louise,” says Kate. “We wanted to keep the business going the best we could and ensure it remained secure for everyone to return to work.”
Looking back, she says it was a huge turning point for the company. “Everyone pulled together, and we did everything we could to make it work. And I think we formed really nice working relationships off the back of that, which changed the business for the positive.” Louise adds: “It did, we were all really keen on ensuring this didn’t defeat us.”
Five years on, Avery & Co remains in a good place. Kate and Louise have since developed a new generation of surveyors, taking them through the qualifying process. “It’s nice to say that we’ve done that,” says Louise. But they are both clear that without each other, Avery & Co wouldn’t be the business it is today.
