ARTICLE ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED 22ND SEPTEMBER 2017
I started my real estate career in the early 1980s, so over 30 years ago! I have been involved in many areas of UK real estate during that period, both cosseted in booms and fighting for survival in busts whilst finding my way through the world of real estate agency into investment banking and then finally (perhaps) private equity fund management. I have seen the poor made rich and the rich made poor and I have seen old habits die hard and new initiatives struggle to gain traction as those fearful of change cling to the comfort of the status quo.
So, when I was recently asked by a prospective Moorfield fund investor what significant changes I felt the near future might hold for UK real estate, I took the opportunity to glance back over my somewhat ageing shoulder and indulged myself. The excuse that the past might help understand the future is always a good one to oil the wheels of reminiscing. I intentionally use the word glance because I don’t want to take to the internet or brain-drain friends and colleagues to ensure I have a heavily researched article with everything covered, I simply wanted to know what I remembered most clearly as being structural shifts. You, the reader, will share some of these memories with me but you may also consider unmentioned other events as more impacting. However, this is intended as a brief personal journey and one that can readily be covered on a ‘then and now’ basis: