11. Niall Farmer: From Monsoon to 75 London Wall

speaker-0: Thanks for tuning in to another episode of Development Diaries. This is a show where we interview leaders, innovators, change makers, movers, and shakers from across the real estate development sector, learning about their career journeys, proudest moments, lessons learned along the way, and advice to their younger you. We also find out what excites them most about the real estate sector right now. I'm your host, John Guest, founder of Henry James Search and the Rebels community. A group of good humans in real estate who come together to move the industry forward and challenge the status quo. On this episode of Development Diaries, I'm excited to be sitting down with Nile Farmer, head of the UK at Gamuda Land. Nile, great to have you with us today. Thanks for joining us.
speaker-1: Thanks very much, John. Excited to be here.
speaker-0: Pleasure. ⁓ so w as you've probably heard, we like to start the podcast by going back a few years to the start of your career and that journey into real estate. So was it something that for you that was written in the stars or was there a few sliding doors moments along the way?
speaker-1: would definitely say the sliding doors moment category, to be honest. I have to be honest, had no idea what I was going to do for a living when I left sixth form and went to university. So I went for a fluid degree, which left a lot of optionality and was more to do more of an arts degree and more of a bit of a blank canvas for once you have completed it on your leaving. So I did politics at the University of Nottingham and ⁓ timed it quite well because I was studying during the global financial crisis. And when I left that auctionality and blank canvas was not like that at all. It was a bit of closed book and there was no opportunities really in grad schemes. The numbers got cut. hugely and I had to sort of try to think about a few things like trying to find some direction and didn't really find it. So I decided to go traveling and before I left to go traveling, I had a temp job at Camden council collecting rent arrears. I mean, I'm not using that as an example of starting off in real estate. was very much an administrative council job and it could have been in any department, could have been in the refuse department, could have been anywhere. was just... where I got put and it didn't really align my interest into real estate. But when I got back from traveling, ⁓ my dad sort of said to me, you should, he was in construction and he didn't want me to work in construction and said, you should look at the property side. You know, I think he sort of had a vision for me of being like an agent or someone, because he always knew that I liked talking a lot and that I was a good people person. So he suggested I do a real estate degree. And the more I read about it, the more, the more I liked. ⁓ albeit I probably didn't see the challenges that were still there by 2011 in the market in finding job roles. ⁓ and I think that's a bit of a common denominator with some people who've been on this pod and, you know, people I've spoken to that. So there's either a wealth of positions at the big agencies and you get taken on in grad schemes and put into departments or you're applying to like 30 of them and no one comes back to you and I just feel like I hear that it's like one end of the spectrum or the other but a lot of people attain the more modern age went through the kind of applying to all of these grad schemes and not even hearing back from most of them. And that's where I ended up. But I was still pushing to work in real estate and I found a job client side at a retail business called Monsoon Accessorize. So maybe not the stars that I projected even that late on, you know, when I first started looking at doing the real estate masters. But. You know, it was a foot through the door. and it's built from there. Yeah, so I guess slowly sliding doors is how I describe it because it took quite a while to find my feet in the industry.
speaker-0: So which order did that all happen in though, just just for those ⁓ listening, you did your degree in politics? You came out into the workplace in the middle of the GFC?
speaker-1: Yeah, 2009 was when I went to work at Camden and I thought I was really lucky to have a temp job at Camden council. And that was solely to just raise some funds to go traveling. then we, you know, think me and two mates, we're just looking at the state of the world and being like, it's really hard to get a job. Let's save up some money, go away and see if things have improved when we get back. And then when I got back, my... You know, almost the day I got back, my father made me go out on building sites for him, but at the same time, was like, you need to think about what you're to do seriously next. And he sort of said, this, you know, if you're lost, then this is something that would be valuable to you. And that there's a lot of different optionality in a real estate, with a real estate degree that would be well suited to your skillset. So after I got like traveling, I signed up to do. the masters, real estate masters at London South Bank. So it was, I think part of the reason was it was in London and I was living at my parents. It was half the price of some of the more elite business schools and it was RICS accredited. So my dad was saying as well, become a chartered surveyor. know, you'll see in a few years, you see a bump in your salary. a decent bump in your salary and that it will, you he was always a chart on the QS side and he said it's always held him in good stead. that was the sort of focus.
speaker-0: Sounds like you had some good advice there and some good mentoring to kind of steer you having got the travelling out of the system, probably spent all of your money, I'd imagine, come back to you know, reset. Didn't want to go into politics either by that point.
speaker-1: It was. Yeah, very much so. Like going and working in a local council office, sounded like an absolute nightmare to me at that stage. So it was very much a focus on something business related and that guidance has held me in really good stead. So thanks, dad.
speaker-0: Sounds like a pivotal moment. So you completed the masters, you landed the role in monsoon accessorize ⁓ in property management?
speaker-1: Yeah, property management was quite broad definition there because there was some exposure to the site finding. Where we had a tired store coming to the end of its shelf life in the wrong part of town, I'd work with the acquisitions managers to go and get, say in Oxford, for example, the newest shopping center and finding our pitch and pre-leasing that and cut some quite exciting bits there. Lots of landlord and tenant work. Whilst we worked with actual L and T surveyors that we outsourced to, we did a handful in-house, which was good for my education and APC and stuff. there was probably, I was looking after, working with someone who was looking after half the portfolio. So there was too much churn and rent reviews and lease renewals to really manage that in-house. So we used external for that. And then there was property management, but we had a property management specific team that they'd dealt with the kind of nastier bits like leaks and licenses to alter and that kind of thing. And they only came to us when things got complicated with landlords, but it was relatively exciting because back then retail was still the go-to and we had places on, you know, we had three stores on Oxford Street and you know, there was exposure to sort of quite high profile tenancies. ⁓ And it was a big portfolio as well, 400 stores and good traveling around and going and, know, my wife always marvels at my like knowledge of regional towns across the UK. I was like, yeah, we used to have my party trick, which is quite a lame one, but it's like naming the shopping center in every town in the UK. I've forgotten most of it now. So don't ask me. So, yeah, but that, I mean, I just thought, you know, it was, it was a little bit. It was better than I thought it would be, but there was another sort of aspect to the job, was there was like a family office attached to the, because was, Monsoon at the time was solely owned by its founder and he had assets throughout West London and they're like big, you know, they owned the office we were in, Stella McCartney's office, Talk Talk at the time, a big broadband provider, they owned their office and. It was a bit of an estate within West London that was owned by the founder. And I did a lot of work on the asset management for that as well, which was, you know, an exciting look into real investment property as opposed to just leaseholds interests on five, 10 year leases for the monsoon retail portfolio.
speaker-0: Yeah, so there's more working in the broader property team than it was just doing that granular property management. And I guess some of those tasks you associate with like a head of property or a junior head of property type role. So that must have been ⁓ yeah, good for relationship building, being on both sides of the deal. ⁓ must have really layered on your experience academically in terms of some real practical examples of working things through. How how do you think that affected helped you with what you do today and and could you share a bit more about how your career progressed from there?
speaker-1: Yeah, I guess it gave what I've found is that ever since then, I've never really been pigeonholed into a single asset class. So even then I was, you know, I was looking after office, some light industrial and an entire household name retail, retail, lethal portfolio. And I just it's given me bit of grounding and understanding in different aspects of the agreement side of property. like, you know, pre-letting and L &T and freeholds and being the landlord and the tenant, ⁓ which was really interesting. And I think those facets of being able to see things from multiple angles, ⁓ being able to live benchmark. not just your main asset class, but looking at it against others from an investment perspective, but also from, from a, as a, as a tenant as well. ⁓ it really w it was really beneficial in, my sort of holistic understanding of how things work. And that's, you know, that, that was really good foundations. more on like an asset management basis. ⁓ but it was good foundations for just picking things up quick, quicker and understanding enough about something to know who you should lean on for more information, who the experts were and, you know, how you would present or propose options to make a decision. and yeah, I think that was, you know, that's certainly given, you know, even today we consider ourselves in my current role at Gamuda is asset agnostic. And, you know, that's a sort of grounding that's come from. Way back, I guess.
speaker-0: From there you moved into more of a development management role, which isn't necessarily the most logical step. the beauty and and I guess part of what we share on this podcast is that development people come from all different backgrounds. But how did you engineer that transition? How did that come about? How did things progress from there?
speaker-1: Yeah, this, I mean, well, after two and a half years at Monsoon, there was, I'd just got my APC. ⁓ and there is a very, ⁓ you would know it's like you get your APC and suddenly you think, well, I didn't think I was God's gift or anything. I just, I thought, well, I put all that hard work in. I've been absolutely slaving away from ending my dissertation to now. I've been working on this and I've been sort of dual working at trying to learn what the working life is all about in a career job, but then also like homework for this big process to get chartered. And you feel like you put all this effort in and then the salary uplift is pretty paltry from the place you're currently at. So you start thinking, ⁓ what am I going to do next? And should I start thinking about my next move and where would I go? And when you're in in-house retail, it's... And the market still wasn't amazing. It had definitely picked up by then though. It was like 2012, 2013, 2013. And I was open to ideas and I went... Last minute, got offered pretty much two weeks after I got my APC. My mate is a Guardian journalist. And he was covering the women's Europeans or tour golf in Turkey. And it was for first-class flights out there staying in a brand new resort that they were soft launching that the journalists and the press team got to stare. And his girlfriends at the time had dumped him pretty unceremoniously and was like, I'm not coming on that trip with you. So I think he needed like a shoulder to cry on and a partner in crime. So I said, look, I've just finished. ⁓ quite a lot of two years of hard work and I'd be up for a free holiday. So ⁓ I put myself forward and you know, went out there and we were in the bar really late. It was like half one in the morning and was a big group of blokes from Essex and I saw some blokes wearing some nice shoes, churches brogues and I just said to him, those were nice shoes. ⁓ He said, ⁓ thanks very much. What do you do? Blah, blah. So I started chatting to him and he was the founder of a company called Malali, which was a big Essex based contractor. that was at the time, think it was they turning over about 180 million a year. So good size, lots and lots of work for, ⁓ housing associations and local councils. and they had gone from doing like plan maintenance for them to, you know, more major refurbishment, to building new blocks, to, you know, to doing forward funds and then JVs where they were, you know, joint venture partners on public land. But then they were the delivery vehicle when it was like structured JVs with big, the National Housing Associations. And they had their own private land assets as well, which they owned all cash, no debt. And they had probably 2500 ⁓ consented pipeline of homes ⁓ in and around London from like Zone 3 and out was really, but there was some stuff in around Canary Wharf, good assets like tower consents. And they just said, you you... You sound like a go getter. You've got you chartered and you know, come in and meet us when we get back to the UK and we can have a chat. And I went in, not really expecting much thinking I'd bet they don't even remember me and they, they offered me a job on the spot and increased my monsoon upgraded APC salary by 50%. And I was like, you know, they might be out in Essex and I might be living in Harrow at the moment, but I'll definitely do that. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Still don't own any now, but yeah.
speaker-0: That is ⁓ one of the biggest slowing doors moments I think the podcast has ⁓ heard so far. So I guess you just don't know who you're gonna meet sometimes.
speaker-1: It was. And I talk to everyone. try to do it like I, my wife sometimes gets annoyed at me doing a bit of networking if we're in, you know, Paris or New York on holiday. ⁓ but you know, you just never know who you might, who you meet. And I'd yeah, I just, it was one of those things where if I hadn't done it, God knows where I'd still be, where I'd be now or what would have sort of played out.
speaker-0: I remember a previous colleague on a on a work ski trip ⁓ in a former life meeting one of his best clients on the lift. You got that kind of 10, 15 minutes to talk to someone as you're going up. Ended up going on to do loads of business with them. It was it was ⁓ brilliant. You couldn't even make you couldn't write it. You couldn't write it at all. ⁓ so you landed in that was Sherry Green.
speaker-1: Amazing. Yes. that was the Sherry Green Homes was the property development arm of the Malali business. ⁓ and yeah, so that was the development role. And to be fair to them, I didn't know anything about development and they just took a, took a chance and on me being a quick learner and someone who cares and wants to impress. you know, I did, ⁓ we, There was like this big void between me and there were three other lads my age who were also hadn't been in development that long. then guys who were nigh on retiring and you know that there wasn't kind of 40 year old go getter in there or it was like these guys were very happy to A teach us, but B give us the workload, give us the like responsibility for communications with our local authority or HA partner to lead on meetings and really to drive projects forward ⁓ under their tutelage. they were very happy to be hands off some of them. But that was great for us because you learn quickly. And then you, whereas I would have probably not been making my voice heard for a long time because I was in a new business, big imposter syndrome, not just new business, new facets of the property world. You kind of had to step up quite quickly and get to know what's good, what's work, what works, what doesn't. They taught us simple things that like will stay with me forever. Like just architecturally stacking buildings. If you've built a building, new build. just try and replicate everything floor by floor and it will make your life a lot easier. Like dropping waste and things like that and having ventilation and rises going through the building. And you know, there's just simple things like that. They taught us day one and you could start beating up the architects a bit with some very simple tenets and principles. ⁓ but yeah, the, and you know, the, I think where things did get quite technical and something probably I'd guiltily I've always shied away from is the ⁓ &E world. You know, I'm still not that comfortable around ⁓ &E, which is good that we've got a good development team here who have the technical knowledge.
speaker-0: Yeah, was there were there any other parts that you found particularly challenging to pick up or was it quite did you just have a thirst for it? Were you really inquisitive? Did you like really naturally enjoy it? So did that really help?
speaker-1: I I was very naturally inquisitive and had leanings towards certain sides. Back then we were selling stuff like hotcakes and it was really interesting seeing the sales process. ⁓ But there were bits, I guess one thing I've been used to working was quite a rapid approval structure to a privately owned business. ⁓ when I was at Monsoon and, you know, sitting next to the office for the property director who was able to sign stuff off. We, that was fine our side. We could go into the room of one of the four directors, explain what the issue is and get sign off. Because we're in JV structures with HAs and local authorities sometimes try partake JV structures. That was, to me, that was a real challenge and quite painful was. into explain things over and over again and, you know, waiting and waiting for decisions to be made, which were impediments to the next decision being made and this kind of waterfall stopping from, you know, the governance piece. that was at the time, I remember that just being like something that was a real frustration that you just had to learn to be patient with winner hearts and minds where you could and. And yeah, and that was probably something that relationship building with our partners was key. And they, know, those partners could have been, they're stretched. The local authority, their DM team was looking after a huge amount of like Lewis and DM team, looking after a huge amount of property and kind of having to buy their time to get decisions made was always a challenge.
speaker-0: Yeah, it's ironic that you studied politics and I guess a lot of our sector does come back to it eventually. So maybe it's if you found that frustrating, maybe it's good that you chose real estate instead. ⁓ how how did your career progress from there? Can you talk us through ⁓ the next couple of chapters up until what you're doing today and some of your career highlights, some of the things that you're proudest of so far?
speaker-1: Sure. So we... We, I was in, I was traveling that commute I mentioned was, was killing me. was an hour and 40 minutes there. And then an hour and 40 minutes back every day. And I was kind of getting to the end of my tether with it after a couple of years. And I got a phone call, ⁓ from a direct in-house recruitment at Lendlease. And back then, this was like 2016. They were, they couldn't stop winning megabits. And they had a desperate need for talent and yeah, they were looking further afield than probably they traditionally would have maybe, you know, because it was a phone call out of the blue based off my fairly limited CV to date and my two or two and a half years in development. they wanted to recruit DMs and they had a project, the one they wanted me on was in Stratford, which didn't get me a lot closer to Harrow, but I was at the time looking to buy in like Laytonstone. And it seemed like, you know, I'd went through quite, it was quite a short interview process to be fair for her. Compared to the one I did at Commedia and you know, there's, it was, I did an interview with HR and then I met the line manager and he was like, okay, met him in a formal environment and then we went for a beer and then he was like, yeah, you the right fit and signed me up. that was, I started off in a master planning team. ⁓ and it was a bit of a, an awakening. I'm not gonna lie. There was a, The level of sort of internal governance was mental. was like, there were these group control meetings and there were, it was multiple a month that you had to spend four or five days going back and forth with your line manager, prepping board meetings to report. it was like, it felt like we spent a lot of time writing papers. and less time doing. but on the, you know, on the master plan team side as well, we were, it's, it's the easiest and the hardest job in the world at the same time. We're looking at kind of hides remaining floor space and optionality through different asset classes. And honestly, just playing around with Lego pieces quite a lot looking at, ⁓ major site constraints, know, like railway sewers and sight lines and all of this kind of thing. But trying to manipulate to figure out what's best for the next five years business plan. given I was doing that 10 years ago and quite a lot of that business plan still hasn't been built on Stratford Cross, which is called now. It just goes to show that, you know, it's really challenging. Someone needs to be master planning, but It's an ever evolving process and it was, ⁓ yeah, was, you know, great experience again, because it's multi-asset class, ⁓ a lot more prime than the stuff I was used to and, ⁓ taller buildings, ⁓ big JV partners, ⁓ you know, the stakeholders level went up. ⁓ I think CPP IB were invested in some of the office, ⁓ LCR, which now been taken under, Network Rail, but you know, these are big institutional partners and it was kind of a step up of a gear from the housing associations and local authorities to city changing projects in Stratford. And that was amazing. But yeah, I think it was definitely a big change. And, you know, it was, it felt a little bit weird to be part of such a big team and to be, you know, to not feel like you're having as much of an impact. and there, you know, it was a big, big machine and lease in the UK and you know, you, it, it, some days it didn't feel like all of the variations are coming up with, or, know, it didn't feel like it mattered that much. And that it wasn't so impactful as maybe where I'd been before and where I was having more of a direct sway in things. So there was a of a segue in my career after that, away from development, where feeling like you're having an impact on something ⁓ was a big box ticked because I went to work for my dad, my family business. ⁓ The dad who told me never to come into construction. I'd asked him a few years ago, because things were going pretty well for his business and they were making good money and he had his biggest project ever on. And I said, ⁓ you know, would you ever consider me joining you? You know, maybe not today, maybe not on 30, but maybe before you retire. And he said, no. ⁓ And then a few years later, he said, would you ever come consider joining me? And I was like, Didn't we? definitely had this conversation and you, it seems like the shoes got on the other foot, but he, ⁓ yeah. So he, asked me and I thought like, this could probably be an opportunity rather than being, having a corporate career to try and, you know, build the wealth that he did and grow a business and, know, make, make good money, ⁓ with an SME and a more of a direct input mentality. And, you know, I could. I analyzed the business at length and, you know, sort of thought here's different areas where we could expand it. but yeah, probably underestimated the work that that took, ⁓ because I joined him in like 20, 19, well, 2018 or 2019. And, it, yeah, it wasn't, it was, it just wasn't what I thought it would be. It was, it was, a lot more challenging. The market was harder. Obviously a lot of things had happened since then, which was like the Brexit, COVID, and just, you know, more difficult, more diverse, more competitive construction market for the work we did. And I, yeah, we were fighting to the nail to keep the business alive rather than to grow it to the next level. And unfortunately, it for a multitude of reasons, it didn't survive. And I was kind of, I'd taken three, four years out and I was looking to get back into development where I felt a bit safer ⁓ and where, you know, I still felt I had the skillset and despite the sojourn and the time away, I thought, I really thought that that's where, that's where I wanted to be. so maybe that's a sliding doors moment in itself, but, I, I, yeah, I just, it, I, there was, there was a guy who was helping us out with a dispute we had. and he, he had, he was just about to take on a full-time role, at a mega construction company where he'd used to work. And he was working for a smaller developer as their sort of construction director. ⁓ and, or, you know, like, ⁓ more like an MD role across the board. And they had a few projects and he said, look, would you fill the gap on vacating and, and do some consultancy work? ⁓ and it was, I was sort of like, this couldn't have come at a better time. and yeah, he. sort opened the door there for me and I went and consulted for about nine months, just dealing with issues for this developer and a couple of other people. Just the odd day here and there for them, but consulting on a very good daily rate. Small developers aren't famously good payers though. So I've spent some of the time chasing invoices. Yeah. And that was when sort of Gamuda... opportunity, Gamudi came along through a friend. He'd paid gold for our chief commercial officer. they said they were looking for someone with cross sector construction development experience who has a good contact book. And he put me forward through it. And I then went through one of the more arduous interviewing processes. It was, yeah. psychometric testing, maths, I had to do my maths GCSE again. I didn't. They had a certificate for that, but I had to do a logics test. ⁓ And yeah, advanced logics test. there was some, there was multiple interviews. ⁓ And yeah. then, but you know, high barriers to entry for the best stuff, I think, because that's, that was four, over four years ago now. ⁓ And that's where all When you say achievements, the ones that all spring to mind are all from these four years at Komoda. the ones that I'm, I feel most proud of have been at this end of my career. you know, whether that is building a team of, of 10 people who, you know, I manage and who are just such a well-oiled machine. I'm very, very proud. ⁓ that, you know, that nearly everything can be delegated to proper professionals and that there's a deep sense of trust and that we're also educating some of the younger Malaysian guys who have graduated from top universities in the UK and are staying here working and learning their trade. You know, the first asset that I acquired or that I'd found through my network was in Woolwich and that site is now, we're knocking on the door for 100 % occupancy this year, in our first year of trading in the student world, which has a brand new student location where we had convictions around the micro location, the asset opposite the Elizabeth Lion entrance by the river views of Canary Wharf, Gales Bakery, ⁓ &S. Like this is things students want, but they haven't heard about Woolwich yet because there's no student accommodation around there. And now we've got one and it's is trading its socks off. that's really good for it, for occupation this year. ⁓ obviously London wall, I mean, the, all the development side, which is what we're here for. Obviously the leasing is covered in that as well, but the actual development side, we've got a scheme from stage zero to 30 % through its construction program now. ⁓ and coming up, ⁓ to a topping out ceremony, hopefully end of November. and you know, in, in 18 months, that'll be, that'll have its tenants fitting out inside and, know, to go from probably where I was before to, to being the LP investor and sort of, you know, heavily involved in all the day to day on, on a one in excess of one billion pound office building. If to me, feels quite astonishing because I couldn't have really dreamed it a few years ago, but you know, it's here we are. And, ⁓ yeah. Just that, mean, yeah, I just feel, I don't know whether I feel proud, but I feel very lucky in terms of the achievements that have happened there. A lot of that is about the team you work with and the people you choose to deliver this stuff. And also my senior exec who decided to take the plunge and let us have a run at it. So yeah, that's probably those two currently. spring to mind and obviously building the team as as sort of proudest achievements. Yeah.
speaker-0: It's interesting because ⁓ just listening to you talk about your journey and thinking of the ⁓ thousands of conversations I've had over the years with people trying to give them the best advice or trying to help them spend the time needed to think about what they want to do next. You know, you've given some really good examples of moving from a a larger business where, you know, attracted by the size of the projects, placemaking, regeneration, a lot of people get into property because that's what they want to do. But actually sometimes the downside of that is layers of ⁓ governance and you know, trying to move things forward. So I think trying to advise people to be honest with where they want to be on that scale. Sounds you went from one extreme maybe to the other, where you could impact everything and probably yeah, that probably taught you a lot in that period of time as a contractor.
speaker-1: Because where we are now is like, it's an SME on the ground over here, but that employs 7,000 people globally. So maybe I found my feet at the best of both worlds where because of the level of seniority that I've come in at, there's like quite a direct line to the C-suite and to the ultimate decision makers. But we've also run like quite a small operation here and it's kind of, it's maybe the perfect balance between. someone like Lendlease and an organization where, you know, there's only 10 of you in a building and you can point to someone in the room immediately to find out who's directly responsible for X, Y or Z.
speaker-0: And you talked about the rigorous interview process as well. I think some people can occasionally get hung up on that, but I think you saw through it. And maybe on the other side, that means if everyone's been through that process, the barrier to entry is quite high and therefore you end up working with high performers. So I don't necessarily think it's always a bad thing. As long as there's e expectations are managed, as long as there's good cadence, as long as they make decisions quickly, actually, it's as much For the candidate as it is for the company, because if you learn things along the way they put you off there, maybe it wasn't right anyway. So ⁓ there's a few lessons in there, I think. For those ⁓ that are a bit less familiar with Gamuda, on top of what you've already shared, I think if anyone's walked through the city, ⁓ seen London Wall, it's ⁓ it's a mega project as you've described. But could you share a bit more about the business and what the plans are?
speaker-1: Yeah, absolutely. So Gamula are a listed infrastructure, construction and property business headquartered in Malaysia, in Kuala Lumpur, but we operate out of nine countries. Our biggest markets are home base in Malaysia, Vietnam and Australia. And the, really the bigger, the bigger brother, you know, The mega part of the business is the infrastructure and construction side where we deliver all kinds of infrastructure. So hydroelectric dams, built Doha airport, we're tunneling the Sydney Metro extension at the moment. And we just actually want to bid to do the over-station property development in Paramatta, which is one of the suburban stations there. And that this kind of these major infrastructure plays and you know, line in Taiwan, which was one last year. They feed, they create capital, which is then deployed through the property business. And the property business has like two levels, I'd say. The base level where mostly income comes from is long gestation, master plan projects we call townships, but you know, it's probably doesn't mean the same thing that it does. Malaysia, but it's a, the township projects may have schools, hospitals, we've got a water park on one of them. There's an up to 20,000 homes potentially over a 20 to 25 year period of building phased. The area of activity we're involved in is called the QTP strategy. So that's quick turnaround project strategy and those projects I was supposed to be have an investment life of zero to five years. They have higher return expectations than the long gestation ones. So they're more IRR driven and the focus is on achieving 20 % plus IRRs levered. And these projects are agnostic, opportunity led. we used to have a rule that it was Between 15 and 30 million pound equity checks, where we could be a hundred percent or 90 % of the capital in joint ventures. I'm starting to see, see that shift a little bit. Obviously, you know, hopefully the spoils achieved from London Wall will show that sometimes bigger can be better. But at the same time, the sheer concentration of that asset in our entire UK portfolio, which is spread through six assets, of course, residential and student housing, as well as that office site is, you know, not sleepless nights because I have the utmost confidence that we'll deliver that site and it was going to be profitable. It's just, you know, having 70 % of your equity in one place is challenging. So I think we'll go somewhere between the smaller projects and the something that size, ⁓ just to encourage exit liquidity, lower concentration of capital. And, ⁓ yeah, just, ⁓ less sleepless nights. I'm not having any, promise. Yeah. So I think, ⁓ that's kind of what Gamuda, ⁓ with, know, the focus, I think in the future will be continued diversification. ⁓ looking at Outside sectors, we've already invested in like industrial logistics, know, maybe admission critical defense. The maybe less focused on just PBSA, which obviously is concentrated on student markets and more on high density living, but looking at co-living again, because we historically looked at it as an early pioneer in 2019. to go back and look at that and I really. obviously continue to keep an open mind about different sectors, different opportunities. I'd obviously love to go back into London offices again, given the experience today and to take all these learnings forward on another project somewhere along the Elizabeth Line, I imagine between Liverpool Street and Bond Street. But yeah, that's kind of really where in a nutshell, what Gamuda are and where we see just our a small fraction of that in the UK and the direction of travel for that.
speaker-0: How do you so being agnostic, I guess, and opportunistic in a market like this ⁓ sounds like a smart move and enables you to go in lots of different directions, but it must also mean you've got to keep your fingers on the pulse on multiple parts of the market, ⁓ locations, macro trends, micro trends, competition. How do you how do you do that? How much of your life is taken up by looking at new potential deals? How how do you keep on top of Where to go next? Because I know you can also deliver some of them directly and some of them enjoy venture. So it must mean a lot of networking too. So how do you fit that into a day?
speaker-1: It's a great question to be fair. And I do sometimes look at how easily we can be spread that far and whether, whether you, if, if you're not a specialist, whether you're getting the right deals and you're looking at the right things, if you're not truly specializing in something. I work really hard. My days are long. But I have a couple of team members who have pretty, either 50 % of their time or their work exclusively on new business. And they, we also, I think as an LP investor who's asset agnostic, to some degree you have to be reliant on the specialists. know, mean, Castle Forge. The Castle Forge entity we deal with, for example, they just focus on pretty much focus on London offices only. They have other parts of the business that have like a residential platform or hotels, but the business unit we speak to are London office specialists. know, the people we work with in student QIP, student only. ⁓ think when you look at markets like student, it's... specialist enough still now, even after the surge into student, know, post viability for BTR disappearing and a lot of house builders pivoting in there, it's still a narrow enough market for us to track, you know, nearly every deal in our target markets. We're also, we're only targeting maybe three or four markets now and to track markets outside of London and the pockets of London we're interested in, I can kind of, to a degree, know exactly where we would want to be pitched in those markets pre-planning and be able to get notification of a new planning consent in any of those markets quite easily. that's, that's quite easy. But when you're in a much broader ⁓ asset class, like living, general living, it becomes a lot harder to control and pre-planning general C3 living sites. It's, you know, you. That's something that we would, we would have to put a lot of work in at the front end to create the systems where we're like filtering opportunities. you know what, because it's not viable at the moment, it's slowed down the priority list. But let's take industrial, for example, where we've spoke, there's 62 industrial DMs in the country. And I think we've spoken to 45 of them and made them aware that it's a sector we want to get into and that we rely on their micro market knowledge. It's a new sector for us. We understand the macro. We understand the principles, but when it comes to the actual micros within these locate, you know, the different markets, we rely on them to explain to us why they think this is the asset we should invest in. And then we can put that to the test through further DDE. But in terms of hoovering up the hundreds of industrial opportunities in the country, we just can't do that. So we do have to rely on a. a friendly expert. And at some stage, if we are truly asset agnostic and we do grow and build, we'll bring someone in who's a land buyer in the industrial world and an expert at that and pay him well. And he'll be the one who brings the opportunities to us. And maybe one day we'll be developing industrial ourselves, but until that point, we rely on the JV partnership and we'll assess the opportunities as and when they come into us.
speaker-0: So finding the best in each market to kind of give you more data to make better decisions. And hopefully some of the 17 that you haven't spoken to might listen to this and get in touch. Yeah. What if for those that are listening that a large part of the market is made up by developer managers, operating partners, developers, you know, I guess those lines have blurred over the last few years as well. ⁓ specialists rather than generalists, partners. What kind of partners
speaker-1: Yeah.
speaker-0: What what's essential to seeing a partner when you're out talking to specialists in the market in their given sectors? And I guess, you know, how different is that for what you'd look for when you're hiring your own people? Yeah. How much do you look at the peered person? How much do you look at the vehicle?
speaker-1: So vehicles are easy, personnel is hard because vehicles track record. You can speak to all of their, I worked with X, I worked with YLP, I gave them this return and you can go and speak to them and say, honest opinion, what are these guys like? did they, what was your, know, can you tell me vaguely, give me a range if you need to, but what was the return on your investment when working with them pitfalls? And you can have like a 45 minute coffee with someone to find out if what they're saying is true. But then the day-to-day personnel you get on your project is different. you know, what we want from like a delivery DM is someone, you know, I guess this is really simple, but the organization and planning element is massive. It's you need someone who's the weekly meeting never moves. They always come prepared. Agendas are set before meetings. We know what we're going to talk about. They put lines through stuff, which hasn't changed from last week. So we can skip straight through that. Everyone's time is valuable. You know, I like, I love a well-oiled machine when you're working with a DM partner where, you know, you go to a site visit and there's 10 things you need to look at, not just walking around aimlessly, looking at empty rooms that still need second fix put in and everyone knows that. What's the point in us walking here? So I think that organization and planning is excellent. A degree of foresight, I'm not asking anybody to be mystic Meg, crystal balls. Don't I'm not saying that someone with just someone who's able to, I can look back on the job and say they picked that up six weeks before it was going to happen. Or they knew the council wouldn't come and enforce on that. So we were fine to open early or whatever the issue is like that degree of foresight, which is a bit of a risk analysis thing or remaining risks on the project. Not quantifying the unknown, but looking at the things that are still to knock off from the project and analyzing whether they're true risks or not and whether we can park them. I think that's really important. then the other, conversely, hindsight is if you're not using hindsight from all your other projects and using lessons learned and we're still making the same mistakes on the second project, the third project. It's like, you know, if someone proposed to me like, Let's say Henry Construction have reborn Henry Construction part two. They obviously went bust, own a lot of people money, went bust halfway through one of our jobs. If someone came to me and proposed them as a contractor, that'd be grounds for me to cancel the T ⁓ relationship. Honestly, I think you have to look to the past and if someone's offering you a contract, four million quid less than the next guy in a tender process, that's a reason not to use them. not to use. and I think, I think hindsight, I, I, I struggle with consultants sometimes because I'm like, this has come up. It's a cut and carve project. These issues have come up on your last 10 projects. And we're still doing this dance where, you know, you're not quantifying the risks. You know, we're going to come in at stage four after we've done all this server information at stage three. we're blindly walking into a design change that you know is going to come. And there's things like that where I'm like, how are we not learning these, the same lessons that happening on every single job? but yeah, I also, love when, you know, if you work with like a good DM, there'll be someone in-house there, whether it's a construction director or a design manager, when they actually understand issues, it's not our job to understand because we're the LP, but complex engineering. mean, it's not even complex. It's new build, but it might have an energy center or ⁓ &E. They need to understand how those things work because if you're just a post box between the contractor and the consultant or when it's getting priced or whatever it is, you're not, that's no good for me because I can just get a PM to do that. But you need to, I think people that understand these Like complex, they are complex, ⁓ structural and the, and the engineering pieces and facades, know, if they, they, a base level of knowledge that can get them through understanding what the true issue is, think that's worth its weight in gold and probably it's probably something we don't see enough of. but that's, this is real design delivery kind of focused DMing me talking about here. These aren't the sort of people you hire to. to tell you the best way to market the building for leasing is it's, you know, this is, this is more on the building side. which I think obviously tremendously important in getting projects over the line at the right price. ⁓ yeah.
speaker-0: And I guess you're you sit in a seat now where you can yeah, pick and choose your team and it's probably the biggest team that anyone has when you work at an LP because you have delivery partners and then the design teams and all of the bits that feed off the back of that. ⁓ so I think you did well to split the question into two and then probably answer both of them in the same answer because they're probably quite similar things of what you'd look for in a person versus a partner.
speaker-1: Also, 10 % equity as a minimum helps from the partner, which isn't a personnel thing, but is a DM thing. That's our lowest threshold. We've never done a deal below that.
speaker-0: Is that just because you like them to be aligned aligned in terms of the outcomes, have some skin of the game? Yeah, really if you really back this idea then put your money where your mouth is a little bit.
speaker-1: Exactly. Yeah. And look, think, you we, if we've, we've worked with smaller businesses before we're quite flexible where that comes from. there's a true, true land value uplift from your planning, then you know, we'll, you can take some of it from that. Or, you know, if, like, if it came down to it and you know, you've got to 8 % and you needed to roll your fee in, then that maybe that could be done as well. But With like straight equity on, know, the true straight equity deal is always great for us because that's where all the money is made, not just on a fee. And that leads to a desire for the promote even more because the more their equity multiplies, the more there's a booster on top.
speaker-0: So it sounds like knowledgeable, communicative, organized, but also has conviction.
speaker-1: Exactly. Yeah. I don't, would never talk ill of anyone out there, but because there's sometimes just not that access to capital. And I think it's a challenge because, you know, there's the world of development. You either work at a massive shop where you've got your own money and you often don't need the kind of investment or you can, you can go ahead without it. Or if you work somewhere smaller and you want to bring your development expertise, but run your own business, it's more of a challenge. ⁓ because you know, you're offering more of a service than like a investment capability. And I think sometimes I've, you know, this hard and fast rule about the co-investment. ⁓ sometimes for me, it feels like, you know, you need to wear a cap that fits and someone could have something incredible to offer us, but because they're an SME, they're not going to be able to. to bring that level of funding. And then it starts to erode anything they make on the job if they have to borrow that money to fund it. I do think maybe we could keep a more of an open mind, but I'll probably get a slap on the wrist from my colleagues for saying that because there's a hard and fast rule from my HQ, which is, co-investment only.
speaker-0: We can't be all things to all people, I guess. That would ⁓ mean you have to consider even more options. But it it's been fascinating to hear how your career has progressed in in kind of opportunistic, being in the right place at the right time, networking, always speaking to people, using your network. You know, there's lots of lessons built in here. But ⁓ on top of what you've already shared now, what would your main piece of advice be to the younger you if you had a coffee with your eighteen, twenty one year old self? just graduated from studying politics. What would you say?
speaker-1: You, yeah, I think this is actually quite a tough one because I've got two, two separate answers to this. Probably one is that you, shouldn't have a different personality inside work than you do outside work. think, you know, people from a young age, you don't, shouldn't just cow tell to how you think you should be. Like I see a lot of people who When we go out, they've got loads to say for themselves, like the younger generation, but, you know, in the office, it's almost like scared to make an opinion heard. And a couple of our guys are, know, top of their school in architecture at a place like University of Manchester. And I'd like to hear their opinions more, because they know more than I do in that kind of remit. And I think people, you know, just... You shouldn't be afraid to say what you think. I think that's really important. Like if you sat, if you sit silently thinking all these things and then somebody else says the thing you were going to say, it's always really disappointing. I find is that especially when you're younger, cause you're like, ⁓ that's exactly what I was thinking. And you know, it helps you progress more if you're in forums, like design team meetings or, you know, wider forums and you're actually asking questions and making yourself heard. And I think I would say that, you know, don't, don't change who you are just to fit into a nine to five working environment and be more yourself. ⁓ and then the other one, this is slightly left field, but I had a chronic fear of like big occasions and public speaking and you know, surprisingly for someone who's fairly gregarious, as soon as I got up there, just buck it in sweat and you know, my hands would be shaking like a leaf. And, you know, I just, I should have done it when I was like 21, but I went to the doctor and they were like, they just said, ⁓ we can prescribe you beta blockers. And, you know, if you just take one of these before your big occasion, half an hour before you, you know, you won't get any of the physical effects of the adrenaline. And that won't, that will allow you to focus on what you want to say and things like that. And I took them and it was literally like a miracle. was like, I wasn't not afraid or not nervous, but. It really made those big moments much, much easier. You know, I was able to think with more clarity. was, everything slowed down a little bit so that I was able to get my thoughts in order rather than things chopping and changing. ⁓ And it was momentous for me as someone who, you know, who was nervous. And I think everyone's nervous to a degree, but it can be particularly bad for some people. So if I was... to go back, I'd be like, don't wait until you're 28 to figure that one out. Which is obviously a weird one, a pharmaceutical answer.
speaker-0: And then practice on top of that, I guess, like all things.
speaker-1: Yeah, but no matter how hard I practiced, it was still a meltdown.
speaker-0: Like some really good lessons in there and ⁓ yeah, I'm sure some things that people can take away from it. I think the being yourself going back to that conviction point, I think we all put people on a pedestal. And particularly earlier in our career, when you get a bit later in your career, you realize that people can't know everything about everything. And actually, you might have done your ten thousand hours in a subject, you know, and done that might be ten times what they've done, even though you feel like they been in it a lot longer, but you've been in a narrow niche and you've got ideas to bring. So having the conviction to share those in the right way and have a voice maybe means that you've you feel like you've had more of an impact going back to some of the reasons that you decided to move on was that you didn't really feel like you were necessarily moving the business. So we sit here in September, ⁓ schools are back. Now it's the run in deal deal season and till the end of the the year now. What excites you most about the real estate sector right now and and where do you see the growth
speaker-1: I was, yeah, I don't want to sound like a negative Nile, but I, my, thing that's probably excited me most is that we're probably at the cusp of being at the bottom of this cycle and that there is, there is a way up from here. I just, it's extraordinary that, you know, so many assets like have which are really high quality assets. If we use the city of London, for example, obviously we're bought at a time when CapRace were different, but they've, they've achieved proper rental growth or they're properly reversionary. And the prices they've been marketed at for, you know, core assets, two Alderman, Breesquare, for example, ⁓ 100 Liverpool street. They're, these are incredible assets. fully tenanted with AAA covenants and they can't sell it like a 5.25 % or they're not selling as far as I can see. And to me, it's like, know that's just, this is stuff that would have, someone would have bitten your hand off a few years ago at that price. And I know what the, you know, the factors, the confluence of factors that have led, has led to that. But I just feel like You know, stuff like that where you can't sell a top asset at 5.25 % today puts everyone off, you know, developing assets. And I think until those cap rates come in, which not really seeing yet, ⁓ it's, it's, it's quite hard to get excited unless you're a value add investor. In which case I would say this is the time, ⁓ to fill your boots where you see, where you see opportunities. where you see something coming towards the end of its shelf life. think, you know, there's, are plenty of opportunities out there for the people that want to do true value add ⁓ or core plus where, know, you might be able to buy some income cheap today, push it on a bit. then, you know, people will always say, ⁓ you can't rely on cat braid compression in a business plan. No, you can't. You can put a sensitivity table in the back that says when we sell this in five years, if things move back. or if this was the bottom of the market, then we would have done very well out of this. I think, you know, maybe the excitement is that we're seeing lots of big investors. it's the city, Norge, Norge, going into more value add plays and looking for actual work with construction involved. And, you know, that money probably from those guys is traditionally a a core buyer, if they're moving in, then hopefully we'll see more investment and more allocations to real estate. Cause I do see allocations to real estate starting to pick up again after quite a big sell off. And that's maybe a signal of the bottom of the cycle is that people are growing their proportion of alternatives and proportion of real estate to real estate. So hopefully we see that build and build and build and you know, to be fair, if it's not core, which I prefer it was because we've got soon to be core fully asset coming onto the market in a few years, at least more money coming into real estate, more activity. That's quite a sort of dreary answer, but it's kind of, yeah, where my head's at at the moment.
speaker-0: You gotta be patient. I guess is what you're saying. And some good times are around the corner, we hope. So on on the topic of the the office market, ⁓ each guest answers a question from the one before. ⁓ and probably quite a poignant moment to ask this, bearing in mind what you've just said. But ⁓ Chris Hunt from V7 was asking a question about stimulating investment. And as we're talking to ⁓ someone who could be one of those investors. ⁓ Chris said, in general, investor appetite is lukewarm across the board. What do you think needs to happen to change that sentiment and to light a fire? And how can we convince investors that now is a buy time? Because values are low, as you said, rents are high, capex is stabilized. How do we get people off the fence?
speaker-1: We're always a victim to this theoretical spread from the 10 year guilt rate. the, until you can narrow that spread or, you know, offer something that sits above it to a, to a decent extent, it's, hard to convince investors to buy into real estate. ⁓ I think, you know, this, this could go one of two ways. I think. Sometimes, and this is a bit of doomsday answer, but things have to get worse to see more activity. Obviously, when it was a global financial crisis, money started piling back into property after the nadir. And, you know, I think to light a fire, which I feel is very unlikely, but if there was... And even worse fall from where we are today. think people would really start to pile back in because at the moment there's too big a spread between what people think their asset is worth and what vendors would pay for them. also that fire could be lit by more enforcement from the banks where they're only looking to get their debt level back or seeing your debt level back. So things are going, there's more of a fire sale for the fire light. but I, you know, I don't, I don't think that is going to happen quickly through, through like rose tinted spectacles when people can just get a treasury treasury bond from the U S government and, effectively, you know, make a better income than the rental yield in, London at the moment. ⁓ so I think, I think my answer now as again, as which is a little bit negative is that I think for the fire to be lit things have to get even worse than they are today and maybe more receivership sales, more stuff being sold by the banks. We really haven't seen a lot of that to be honest.
speaker-0: What to reset that expectation versus what the buyers will pay.
speaker-1: Yeah, because I think if the vendor's the bank, then that spread is sorted because they don't care about the lost equity. And whereas your current in-situ vendors want to make that money back, or at least...
speaker-0: Well they want to crystallise a loss, do they? It's not a loss, I guess. Until you do that in theory. But
speaker-1: Yeah, that's probably, I mean, not the PR that I should be spreading on, you know, as a, as, but that's, I, look, I think that's, that's a very negative way of thinking of things, it's just this continual creep of the 10 year guilt in the UK, outwards, it's making things slightly worse. the status on the interest rate. that it's very unlikely to come down meaningfully this year, you know, and they're even touting more next because of the Iran war. But maybe some, maybe another fire could be lit with, you know, domino effects and some bad midterms for the Republican party. You know, a bit of a wake up call to Donald Trump to get the war over and done with and try and get things back to normal before, you know, we have a major energy crisis to deal with again.
speaker-0: That was ⁓ that wasn't the answer to the where do you see the opportunity right now? That was the answer to Chris's, how do we stimulate demand? So make yeah, maybe the summary is at the moment it's hard to say exactly where t which lever to pull, but ⁓ something's you gotta change for the good times to return.
speaker-1: Yeah. And I think we need activity from home turf a little bit to push things on. We're very reliant. Yeah, exactly. I mean, when you look at the top inflows, the UK's 10 year average, we're well below 10 year averages in terms of inflows into property.
speaker-0: Yeah. So in return for answering Chris's question, now, would you like to leave one for the next guest?
speaker-1: ⁓ yes. So this one's a simple one. ⁓ and it's what do you think the prime London office cap rate will be today in a year's time? So on the 14th of September, 2027, if you're correct, I'll donate £800 to a charity of your choice, but if you're wrong, You have to do a CPD session with the Camilla land UK team for an hour. So I don't know who he's going to end up with. They might be a data center developer. ⁓ I'm not sure who's next on the pod, but, and whether they know anything about London office cat raids, but, ⁓ I'd love to love to hear.
speaker-0: Whether with everything you've said that makes a difference anyway, I don't know. But yeah, I've I've we've not had a question with a prize before, so I'm I'm excited to to see how this plays out. So I put a reminder in my diary for a year's time.
speaker-1: Yeah, definitely. I'll put a reminder in as well. ⁓ hopefully that won't leave you short on... They might... It could be extremely knowledgeable and give a reason why they think X is going to be Y. ⁓ Yeah.
speaker-0: Hundred percent. Well, now thanks for taking time out of your busy schedule to spend some time with us today. And really fascinated to hear about your career journey, some of those sliding doors moments, trips, last-minute holidays, navigating, you know, retailer, then into development, up into master planning, then to what you're doing today as, you know, one of the LPs with a really active agnostic pipeline in the London market. And and thanks for sharing your honest thoughts about. Where we stand. So ⁓ thanks again for joining us. Thanks so much for tuning in to this episode. Your support means the world. Please feel free to like, share, or pass the podcast on to a friend or colleague. Do drop me a line with any suggestive topics you'd like us to cover on future episodes and recommendations of guests that you would love to see us interview. Till next time, go well.
speaker-1: Superb, thanks John.