We are a nation of house-buyers, with Brits desperate to put their money in bricks and mortar.

However with mortgages harder to come by people are seeking out alternative options. If you have some collateral, that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t invest.

I may have a solution for you – dealing in modern art and vintage late twentieth-century furniture.

You may think this is the reserve of the posh and rich. But, as a one-time working-class lad from East London, I can tell you it absolutely is not.

Starting off as a clerk at Sotheby’s at the age of 17, I left at 24 to start my own business, and now own a large gallery called Decoratum in London’s trendy Marylebone.

I live in the prettiest square in a very fashionable part of North London, and count Kate Moss, George Michael and Jude Law among my neighbours.

Now I’m going to let you in on the secret of how you can do the same….

*YOU WILL NEED SOME MONEY

I’m not going to kid you – it’s tricky for somebody without a decent sum of money to get on the art-dealing ladder.

But it’s the same as buying a house. So, if you have £20,000 or more for a deposit, but can’t or don’t want to invest in property, read on…

*SEEK THE RIGHT ADVICE

Anyone can do very well buying and selling modern art and modern/vintage furniture if given good advice.

It’s vital you get to know the main players, and one way is to regularly visit dealers.

I don’t know any major dealer who wouldn’t be delighted to give advice to a potential customer. Their advice is invaluable in getting onto the first rung of the dealing ladder. However, stick to galleries with a reputation…

*EXPERIENCE BIG EVENTS 

If you want to get into dealing, go to as many exhibitions and auctions as you can and take in the atmosphere.

The best are at Sotheby’s Christie’s, Bonhams and Phillips, and their main glitzy evening sales are held a couple of times a year. You will see some pieces sell for £100 million or more and you’ll be hooked.

*DON’T RUSH INTO ANYTHING

Very few people buy on the first night of exhibitions. In my experience, serious punters have often already been. So ask for a preview of the exhibition, instead.

*BUY FROM BIG NAME GALLERIES

If it’s serious investment you want, buy from galleries that have been around years – such as Gimpel Fils, or Marlborough Fine Art – who used to look after Freud, and now look after Anthony Gormley, and other huge names.

They are run by serious academics, which museums latch onto quickly, and promote their artists – unlike high-street galleries, where the artists on sale are the celebrity equivalent of Z-listers.

*LOOK ABROAD

Check out art from other countries, not just England. Chinese art is going to get bigger and bigger. Also, art from the Middle East is a good buy.

*REMEMBER THE RISK OF ‘CONTEMPORARY’ ART

While you can make a fortune dealing modern art, you can lose it in an instant if you don’t buy at the right price.

Remember, the word ‘contemporary’ is made up of two words…
Con: Art dealers will hype something – but if there’s too much hype… keep away.
Temporary: Today’s flavour of the month is very quickly tomorrow’s garbage.

*AVOID POP-UP GALLERIES/EXHIBITIONS

The stuff may look nice on the wall, and be cheaper than wallpaper, but it very rarely goes up in value unless by a big name.

Better to have a poor painting by a well-known artist than a great painting by someone you never heard of. But make sure you like it…

*LIKE WHAT YOU BUY

Buying purely as an investment rarely turns into an investment. If you buy something that you 95 per cent love, and 5 per cent for investment, then more often than not you will be onto a winner.

*DO NOT BUY AT AUCTION THINKING YOU ARE CUTTING OUT THE MIDDLEMAN

Don’t be fooled into thinking you will buy art cheaper at auction than you will from a dealer. It’s a fallacy.

Dealers love auctions. We are very careful what we buy and need good stock in our galleries. But when we get bored with a great painting that hasn’t sold in ages, off to the auction it goes!

*IF YOU MUST BUY AT AUCTION, GET AN INDEPENDENT EXPERT 

If you do see something that interests you at auction, don’t be afraid to ask a dealer to buy for you. People get carried away at auction and it’s their job not to let you overpay. Yes, they charge 5 per cent, but their advice and knowledge pales this into insignificance.

*AND REMEMBER THE ADDED COSTS

It’s easy to forget that you have to pay a so-called ‘hammer premium’ (like a service charge) on top to the auctioneer of around 20 per cent. I have seen people forget… and get badly stung.

TO GIVE YOU A FLAVOUR OF THE POSSIBILITIES – HERE ARE MY FIVE BEST BUYS

1) A decanter I bought 40 years ago in a very expensive shop in the Burlington Arcade for £60 and sold at auction £460. I know this doesn’t seem a lot but shows it’s often more profitable to go to expensive shops where goods are already restored rather than buying something cheap and having to do the restorations yourself.

2) A 17th Century walnut “kneehole” desk that I bought 20 years ago for £60,000 from the most expensive shop in New Bond Street and sold at a London auction house for £310,000, including the ‘hammer premium’. It shows all my best bargains are purchased from the most expensive dealers.

3) A painting by American artist Roy Lichtenstein that I paid £28,000 for from a dealer 15 years ago and sold two years later for £180,000.

4) A painting by David Hockney that I paid £90,000 for eight years ago and sold after four years for £550,000.

5) Last year I bought a 1998 Damien Hirst ‘spin painting’ with butterflies for £22,000, and sold it at auction in the same year for £53,000.

Read more:
How to get rich dealing in modern art & vintage furniture

But I’ve finally come to my senses and now find the habit dated and downright embarrassing for both tipper and tippee. All I’m doing is supporting those who don’t tip. And when I can no longer work out why I’m tipping one kind of worker and not another, it’s time to start questioning the whole sorry scenario…

What finally made me snap was getting into a cab with a couple of heavy small boxes which the cabbie wouldn’t help me with because he had a “bad back”. I only needed to move them 300 metres from one end of London’s Bond Street to Sotheby’s.

The meter hardly registered and on a £3 meter charge I gave him 50p more than the nothing he deserved. Yet still the miserable bugger opened the window and threw my tip back at me, shouting it was “a bloody insult”.

When he said a pound would have been more fitting, I told him I certainly had no intention of insulting him twice and went angrily on my way…

When it started as a common practice in the late 19th Century, tipping was seen as a kind-hearted thank you for providing great service, not an expectation. Simply, it was a nice thing to do.

But it has gone too far. Tipping is no longer about showing appreciation for decent service. And it now has nothing to do with generosity. Tipping has become a social habit that borders on the nonsensical. It’s about being brainwashed by society to “do the right thing”.

And, frankly, enough is enough.

What makes it right for one type of service industry worker to expect to be tipped for doing their day job, but not another?

I own various companies and none of my staff has ever received a bean in tips, no matter how good their work is.

My installers at The Air Conditioning Company give our customers a far better service, and for far longer, than any moody taxi-driver who expects a tip for doing nothing more than knowing his way around town.

But see that cabbie’s little face turn to anger if you don’t give him a tip for merely doing his job with no more diligence than any other worker.

At my Decoratum gallery in London’s West End, the sales staff give far better customer care than a gardener, sommelier, or bell-boy – and their advice could even make you rich.

Why don’t I tip the shop assistant at Selfridge’s who has served me so well for 15 minutes, yet tip the barman who took 20 seconds to pour me a drink? Because I’m a bloody fool.

If my hairdresser does a good job, the best tip I can give is I will go back. If she does a bad job I go to another salon. Yet still I tip. And why? Because I’m mad.

Until 2008 it was always illegal to tip casino croupiers if you had a run of good luck. Surely now they should give it back when you later lose a shedload of money because they dealt you a string of bad hands.

I once even had a solicitor try to add 25 per cent to my invoice for a “successful outcome”. Instead, his “successful outcome” was that I never went back to him and he lost £150,000-a-year from my companies. Before that, was I paying him to fail?

Why was I giving money to the supermarket delivery man who carries my order to the door without tripping over? Even the pizza delivery driver expects a tip for turning up at my house having managed not to crash.

All because the company he works for won’t pay him what he’s worth – meaning us tippers are left to pick up the bill, both literally and metaphorically. We are subsidising those sensible ones who’ve seen the light and decided not to tip.

Restaurants take it one step further to help us fund their wage bill, with a 12.5% gratuity, whether we get great service not. Why else do you think that most serving staff would prefer their gratuities in cash?

But when was the last time you received sincerely great service as opposed to simply good service? All adding a mandatory charge does is act as a disincentive to great service, because the staff know the employer will nick the lot to share as wages among the entire staff – including the chefs, who earn more than the waiters anyway.

In the States, the Federal minimum wage for restaurant workers who receive tips is $2.13 (£1.29) per hour in the expectation that they will receive tips that will bump up the minimum hourly wage to $7.25 (£4.41).

Can there be any greater proof that even the US government is trying to encourage tipping, rather than pressure stingy employers to pay their staff a decent living wage instead of making customers feel sorry for them?

Their argument for tipping is that hard work brings rewards. If that’s the thinking then tell the employers and make them pay their staff appropriately.

Thank goodness common sense has prevailed at one Japanese restaurant in New York. Sushi Yasuda has banned tipping. They state at the bottom of bills that “service staff are fully compensated by their salary package and therefore gratuities are not accepted”. Well done them.

Like those bright sparks, it’s about time we all got real and entered into the habit of only tipping for phenomenal service, miles over what would normally be expected of a person doing their day job.

And, to those employers who expect us customers to top up the miserly amounts you pay your staff, listen up: Your days are numbered.

Image: Tips by Shutterstock

Read more:
Why I am giving up tipping – and you should do too

Let’s not forget that negotiation is something that everyone of us does every single day of our lives in some form or another.

It’s not just about financial negotiations. There’s negotiation in love, there’s negotiations with our children, there’s even negotiation at high street shops where you might be surprised that there would be any room for negotiation whatsoever!

I was with a friend a few years back in a well-known department store in Oxford Street and on his behalf I offered the camera department £300 less than the ticket price for an expensive camera or we would go elsewhere. Deal done!

Negotiation knows no bounds!

Good negotiation is as much about putting a nonchalant face on and suggesting to the other party that you couldn’t give a jot whether or not you do or don’t do the deal when, of course, anything else than that sentiment is the reality.

And be mindful, it’s not always the highest offer that wins the day. So many times on Channel 4’s art negotiation program,”Four Rooms” I had offers accepted by the vendors when they had already received higher offers from the other dealers. And why? I promise you that it has nothing to do with the fact that I am, of course, far better looking than the other dealers. It’s because I am able to put a deal together. moreover, i make it sound far sexier than just offering a lot of dosh.

For example, if I can see that an up and coming artist needs far more than a good price for his painting and that he needs a great dealer to market his works, then he has to accept that opportunity by accepting less for his painting. It works nearly every time and the only people that it doesn’t work with are those artists that will in any event, however good they are, be consigned to the scrap heap of history. I don’t want to only deal with artists that can do art. I want an artist who understands what business is about. An artist who appreciates that having a good dealer/behind him/her will infinitely increase the chances of his getting big. That sentiment hasn’t hurt Damien Hirst’s marketability!

Hirst will be the first one to confirm that he’s not the greatest artist in the world but, by far, he’s the greatest businessman in the art world. And remember, he had an amazing manager in the form of Jay Joplin of White Cube to get him ahead. He listened… He acted, He was successful. So many artists feel that they can manage themselves. They can’t. They should be concentrating on their creativity and leaving the business creativity to someone far more qualified.

In every walk of life negotiation is king. Indeed, I’ve made more than a good living being a great negotiator.

It started at the age of 29 when I had my first “awakening” that there was a decent living to be made from being a keen negotiator and helping others.

At the time I was five years into my art dealing career when I sent a large consignment of Oriental works of art to an auction house in New York. I decided to go to the auction and to my amazement all of the goods were displayed in a badly damaged condition and the auction house didn’t even give me the courtesy of letting me know that they had arrived in bad condition. I put in an insurance claim and the insurance company tried every which way to wriggle out of paying the claim.

My insurers instructed their own loss adjuster to represent their interests on in the guise that they were helping me! That loss adjuster tried to talk me into suggesting that the only reason I sent the goods to the USA for auction rather than selling them in the United Kingdom was in order that I could fraudulently blame the shippers or the auction house for goods that had been previously damaged in the United Kingdom. In short, I found myself in negotiations with a “bent” loss adjuster who wanted to impress his Lords and Masters, that he could get an honest claim repudiated…..

I had to think fast… very fast, as to how I could do battle with this cheating bastard of a loss adjuster parading himself as honesty personified.

Coincidentally, a sheet of his handwritten notes from his file accidentally became attached to another piece of correspondence that he sent me. I noticed that his handwriting was like no other handwriting I had ever seen. It was close together and at a very strange angle and, indeed, it could only be read if one held the edge of the paper at eye level. It was virtually impossible to read at any ordinary angle.

I decided to send the sheet of handwriting to a well known graphologist at what seemed massive cost in those far off days in order that I could get a professional opinion of the personality of the loss adjuster. It has to be said that 20 or 30 years ago far more reliance was placed on the opinion of a graphologist when deciding whether to employ someone or not. Certainly I am not suggesting that a graphologists report is the be all and end all of deciding someone’s state of mind….but it can help in some circumstances. Certainly, if a graphologist tried to decipher my handwriting my family would have me sectioned very quickly!

When the graphologists report came back I knew that I had hit the negotiation motherload. The report suggested that I was dealing with a delusional character with slight psychopathic tendencies and someone who felt the need to constantly impress others.

At that point the negotiations certainly took a interesting turn…..

I invited the loss adjuster out for lunch on the pretext that I need to get something off of my mind and very quickly. Quite naturally, he had assumed that I needed to “come clean” on my “fraudulent insurance claim”. I suggested that lunch might be inappropriate and that it might be more professional to meet at his offices. I suggested that it might be better if the conversation were recorded rather than him having to write everything down……..I had him in my lair!

I pulled out the graphologists report and read what he had assumed was a report on my own handwriting and he asked me if I wanted to withdraw my claim against his principals. It was at this point that I passed him the sheet of his own handwriting and his face went ashen. His whole demeanour quickly changed and all of a sudden he wanted to be my best friend! He begged me not to show the report to his employers. ,I never suggested I was going to!) What I do know was that within the space of seven days I got paid out every last penny of my claim and he was a free man!

This of course is a classic instance where sometimes you have to fight fire with fire in particularly difficult negotiations.

On the back of those negotiations I thought that if I can do it for me I can do it for anybody. It was then that I opened the doors for the first time of Salmon Assessors in 1984 ostensibly to fight the good fight and helping art and antique dealers with their insurance claims. Whilst a few art dealers did come to us, we were very soon inundated with other business and domestic claims and Salmon Assessors was born big-time!

Within 12 months of trading, I was invited by LBC (London Broadcasting) to be a pundit with veteran DJ Pete Murray when people telephoned the station telling me about their insurance claim problems and their tales of woe and my giving them advice as to how to get the claim paid. The programme lasted for some 20 years.

30 years on, perhaps 60% of our clients are commercial whilst the remainder are domestic claims. Of interest is that when the business first started the vast majority of our customers were Anglo-Saxon. The pattern has now drastically changed and 70% of our customers come from ethnic backgrounds.

I have no problem shouting out from the rooftops that, in my opinion, claimants from ethnic backgrounds where skin colour is apparent are treated with infinitely less respect and scepticism by loss adjusters acting for insurers than those claimants from an Anglo Saxon background. That is something that insurers simply must address here and now. Ethic claimants face a massive disadvantage when making a claim.

Even now, insurance assessing is still a little known profession and many claimants prefer not to pay a 10% free to a loss assessor to negotiate their claim and decide to go it alone. As Lord Hailsham eloquently put it all those years ago, the man who represents himself in a Court of Law has a fool for a client!

You are considered very unlucky if you make a couple of very large insurance claims in your lifetime. How can you effectively negotiate your claim with such little insurance claim experience?Any worthwhile firm of insurance loss. assessors take on 2 to 3 claims weekly and are experts at negotiating insurance claims through and through.

Many potential claimants suggest that their insurance brokers themselves will negotiate the claim at no cost on their behalf. Indeed they might. Undoubtedly your insurance broker will make the best effort to negotiate your insurance claim on your behalf in the limited time that they have available for a non-profit making activity. What’s more, your broker is not a trained insurance claim negotiator. The insurance brokers job is to find the best possible policy at the lowest price….not to negotiate your claim. Let’s not forget that even the insurance companies themselves understand that they are not negotiators when they employ third-party help in the form of loss adjusters to negotiate the claims. It’s only a pity that claimants are not as prudent as the insurance companies in this regard. Perhaps a good analogy is the very fact that you will not go to your doctor to have a tooth pulled out. You would go to an expert in tooth pulling…..not your doctor!

Loss assessors don’t sell insurance policies even though there’s a great argument that they are in a fantastic position to do so insofar that they know which insurance companies are easier to deal with in the event of a claim and would be able to recommend on that basis.

Finally, when you are negotiating your insurance claim, be mindful that in the old days of 20 or 30 years ago the insurance companies were staffed by gentleman who just wanted to earn an honest profit for their shareholders. In today’s economy driven society, insurers will do everything possible to repudiate claims for the flimsiest of reasons to satisfy their shareholders and earn themselves bigger bonus’s.

Jeff Salmon is founder and chairman of insurance claim assessors Salmon Assessors (www.insuranceclaims.co.uk)

Read more:
How to Negotiate like a pro: Part I