Estate agent becomes online sensation after mother posts about 'hilarious' visit to her London home

Web hit: Dan Stevenson with Elsie, three, and Marnie, 18 months
Lorna Hayward

An estate agent today told of his shock after a blog post about his "chaotic and hilarious" valuation visit to the home of a London mother-of-two went viral online.

Dan Stevenson, 26, became an internet celebrity after his visit on Friday to the Wandsworth home of Lorna Hayward and her two girls Elsie, three, and Marnie, 18 months.

In the past three days he has had countless messages from mothers asking him out or for him to value their homes after an adorable picture of him with the girls was posted by Mrs Hayward on her Instagram page.

Full-time mother and blogger Mrs Hayward said she took the picture after her girls “took a real shine to him” and followed the estate agent around the house asking for cuddles and whether he was he staying the night.

They also “hung on to the leg” of Mr Stevenson and asked him if he’d like some of their dinner before Elsie announced to the agent, she had done her “biggest poo yet – it was a bit spikey though, so please can you wipe my bum”.

Mrs Hayward, who runs the site themumblings.co.uk, posted the cute picture online and to the Facebook group of honest parenting group The Motherload.

She said: “I thought it was the kind of thing the Motherload would love as it is a typical situation faced by lots of mums - your children being chaotic and hilarious and you frantically apologising for them.”

Mrs Hayward told the Standard she then went out for the night with her friend and her “phone started going crazy.”

She added: “I wasn’t on my phone so I wasn’t replying and I think everyone thought I had run off with him. I think the members wanted to find out more about him.”

Some members then started tweeting with the #findDan hashtag - with over 30,000 people either tweeting, sharing or commenting on the post online in the past few days. Many were attempting to track down Mr Stevenson to ask out the "hunky estate agent" or get him round for a valuation.

Mr Stevenson was eventually revealed as a south-west London estate agent working for the Purple Bricks website.

Mr Stevenson told the Standard he was out on Friday night when he started getting a number of friend requests and messages from random women talking about his visit to the Haywards home.

He said: “I couldn’t find the article they were talking about so I had no idea what was going on really. [During the valuation] Lorna had said she was a blogger and she did take a picture but I didn’t really expect what happened. My CEO emailed me on Saturday explaining what had happened and then I finally found it [the article]. I am shocked with the response. I didn’t do anything different to a normal visit. It was a normal day for me.”

The agent said he had “lots of cousins” in his family so was “quite used” to dealing with young children, adding: “They are two lovely girls.”

Purple Bricks are now offering to sell Mrs Hayward’s house for free following the post. Mr Stevenson also added that, if anyone wants to have him sell their home, they can look up his name on the Purple Bricks website and ask for him specifically.

Kate Dyson, CEO & Founder of The Motherload, said: “The website and community is a great network of brilliant mums who come together to discuss the highs and lows of parenting in a supportive, non-judgemental way. We absolutely loved watching #FindDan unfold, with nearly 2.5k likes on the post, and hundreds of comments as our 23500 members sought to find Dan and bring him into the fold.”

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