We take this opportunity to honour the life and memory of Simon Tilsiter, our managing director, who tragically lost his brave and difficult fight with cancer on 13 October 2025. 

Strettons welcomed Simon as a fresh-faced graduate trainee from Oxford Brookes University on 3rdSeptember 1990. He was recruited into the auction team by former Directors Graham Slyper and Ben Tobin where he very quickly established himself - and where all who were working with him got the early glimpses of the ball of energy and ideas that defined Simon’s journey through the firm. 

Shortly afterwards, Simon moved into the property management department and was instrumental in helping grow that team to a compliment of 42 that it is today. 

Ben recalls the day he suggested to Simon that he move to the firm’s property management department to further his career and widen his property experience. All of the board members at that time had every confidence that he could make the switch, as Simon possessed the rare qualities of having incisiveness, understanding and empathy with both landlords and tenants. Simon also had the ability to see through issues as to what was behind them, and how to find a pragmatic solution. He was undoubtedly someone who loved people, always managing to put them at ease. He appreciated from very early on in his career the adage of people being a company’s most important asset. 

Simon was promoted to Director in 1998, then taking the helm as Managing Director following Ben Tobin’s retirement in 2019. Ben gave the board five years’ advance warning of his retirement from running the firm and while not making any suggestion or influencing in any way, it was evident to him who would take over; the other directors inevitably reached the same conclusion - Simon. Ben had no doubt that they would, but was happy with the speed, unanimity and lack of discussion with which they did so. 

While working full pace managing portfolios that were substantial in terms of numbers of properties and values running to tens of millions, he also qualified as a Registered Property Receiver, quite a tough challenge, but of course, he succeeded while still doing his day job.

Only a few weeks before he died, late on the day he was told that his treatment wasn’t working, he was on the phone calling a potential new client. 

Throughout his time on the Board, Simon has been incredibly influential in helping shape and grow the firm and the ethos of the business. He has provided invaluable mentoring, guidance and support to so many colleagues across the firm, past and present and took great pleasure in watching those graduates that he had mentored become qualified chartered surveyors and flourish in their careers.   

Outside of work, Simon was involved in advising housing charities including J living and, in the past, devoted a lot of time to the CST (Community Security Trust). He had also been a keen attender at the educational programmes of Project Seed.  His passions included travel and the outdoors - skiing and mountain biking in particular,  and of an evening, he’d enjoy tipple of whisky here and there. In addition he also trained learning a martial art called Krav Maga. He was a snappy dresser - most of the time, with a decidedly individual taste in 1980’s music. He loved a laugh and a joke and was just a great person to be around. 

Simon had a manner and energy about him that was so infectious. He was a serial networker, and he made an unforgettable impression on everyone who met him, both in his personal and business lives. This, not surprisingly, resulted in him establishing career-long relationships and friendships with so many clients and contacts.

He started his career in a firm that was a very different business than the one we are today. From the moment that he took over as MD, he had so many challenges, apart from anything else steering the firm through Covid, furlough, and then back to the office again. Simon ensured that Strettons not only survived these turbulent times but working with the Board was instrumental in growing the company both organically and through acquisition. Strettons has gone from strength to strength, and he always led the business with great integrity, professionalism, and kindness, with “family “always at its heart.

We will always strive to continue honour those values, as Simon would have wanted, and to make him proud. 

No words can ever convey our sympathies for the loss to his devoted wife Beverley and his three amazing daughters, Carla, Ella and Zoe, whom he loved, and was beyond immensely proud. 

The whole firm struggles to talk of him in the past tense – we keep expecting to see him bounce into the office with his smiley face, walking on the balls of his feet with his characteristic gait.  The bounce summed him up; he was a wonderful man and will be greatly missed by everyone who knew him. 

 

* The picture at the top of this page is called 'Wanderer above the Sea of Fog' by Caspar David Friedrich. This is an early 19th century painting that spoke to Simon deeply, connecting to his vision and agency in the face of adversity.