"If you're going to be an agent and you believe in certain deals, you should always be buying properties," says Vishal Patel, principal at commercial property investment specialist Prideview Group. "If you don't buy property, that means you are selling something you don't believe in," he adds.
Vishal is one of four principals in charge of the Stanmore, London-based business founded 40 years ago by his father, Shailesh Patel, and his uncle Rajendra Patel, a company they say prides itself on "longevity, experience and reputation".
On 17 July the group will host its annual charity cricket tournament at Merchant Taylors’ School in Northwood, Middlesex, which last year involved former international stars such as England bowler Saj Mahmood and South African coach Herschelle Gibbs.
Ahead of the tournament and to celebrate its 40th anniversary, CoStar News spoke to bosses at Prideview about the business's humble beginnings, its evolution following the credit crunch in 2008 and its increasing role as a co-investor.
Founding fathers
How Prideview became a property investment business is somewhat down to chance. Having originally owned a newsagents in Watford, business partners and brothers-in-law Shailesh and Raj Patel decided to sell up and try their hand at something new by finding their way into commercial property auction rooms.
The pair would rely on their experience of the retail sector during the early stages of their property careers, while also working with Shailesh's brother who was plying his trade in commercial property law at the time.
They bought their first property in 1985, a small cafe in Stockport for £6,000, when UK interest rates averaged 12.5%. However, the duo was presented with an immediate dilemma when their tenant handed back the keys to the cafe on their first visit to Stockport, stating they couldn't afford to keep it open.
"They had this empty shop, which they then had no idea what to do with," says Jesal Patel, principal at Prideview, as he recounts the early days of his father, Shailesh, and his uncle's first steps into the property sector.
Presented with an opportunity, the pair decided to put the property back into auction and it sold for a profit. "And they thought, 'maybe there is something here in trading buildings'," Jesal adds.
Following their success, the Patels repeated the feat with other properties, buying buildings at auction and returning to sell them at a higher price, setting up in the living room of Vishal's childhood home.
The principals explain that their fathers began to carve out a niche for themselves in the early days by purchasing buildings at auction and selling them to the East African and Indian community for a small profit.
"[People] used to come to our parents and say, 'we have X amount of money to spend from our pharmacy this month, let's buy something', and that's when they arranged the finance, the acquisition, they would arrange the legal [checks] with a good lawyer, and then that was it," Vishal says.
Nilesh Patel, principal and son of Raj, also describes how the East African and Indian community's appetite for property helped drive the Prideview business during the formative years of the firm.
"People in their community were here and they wanted to settle down, they wanted long-term investments, they wanted freehold property, and they could also afford it with the help of the banks, obviously, with the 80% loan, it was all very affordable.
"So there was a lot of long-term thinking behind what they were doing, and I think that drove it more than anything else, the demand was there and they were backed by lending appetite as well."
Auction advantage
Jesal and Vishal describe the importance of the role of auctions in giving their fathers a point of access into the property industry. "Without having a name, [an auction] was the easy access into the market because you could walk in and buy a building," Jesal says.
"So it was their way of getting into the market without knowing lots of agents, to get those off-market deals, so they had to go into auctions and buy things and then sell to the community or whoever they knew wanted to invest. [They] would be the go-to in that market."
Jesal says the early focus of the founders was on high street retail properties, something which both men "understood and saw", Vishal adds. Although he admits the pair "didn't really have a strategy" at the beginning, he says they would pay close attention to the tenants at properties that came up at auction.
Banks, such as Barclays and Lloyds, were a favoured tenant of the pair. Vishal explains: "The reason for that is that, when they [would] speak to a lot of these investors, they didn't even go and see the properties, they just looked at this 15-year lease, looked at the tenant and that's all they cared about."
But the Prideview bosses say their fathers used their intuition to grow the business and make a name for themselves in the area. "They just loved buying and selling, it was about the trader intelligence," Jesal says.
"I don't think there was any full-on strategy in-place apart from to just make an earning so we and all our families could grow up and have a comfortable life. I don't think there was any strategic vision behind it, or thought process of the kind of things we do today."
Vishal adds: "They were just two guys who were trading. There were no investors behind them or anything like that, it was purely help with the banks.
"They had a very good relationship with lots of the investors, with the banks, and that's how it built up. The more property they traded, they used the deposits, made profit and then reinvested it. It was always about reinvestment."
Parade march
Significant deals for the founders during the early years of the business included the purchase of six shops and maisonettes on Fulham Broadway in 1992, London, for £1.17 million, a contrast to the Stockport cafe the business partners had acquired just seven years earlier.
Jesal describes that deal as one of the founders' favourites. "[It was] a very well-known parade and they ended up breaking it up. What they would do is, the bigger they got, they would go and buy parades, and they would chop up the parades and go and sell them to investors, that was one of their favourites."
Prideview opened its first office in 1993 at Premier House in Harrow and moved again six years later into 252 High Road in Harrow. The principals say the group strategy with the properties it bought at auction was to move on from them quickly and sell. But the Patels founded Eastway Estates, a family office, in the late 1990s that would allow them to start to grow their own property portfolio.
Jesal explains: "They had a building in Mayfair at one point on Conduit Street or Curzon Street, but they bought and sold because there was the requirement for cashflow, so they could never hold on.
"Sometimes they will come [into the office] and say, 'oh we used to own that', and they will always be like, 'I wish I held it', but the truth is that they couldn't hold all these buildings. Some of the buildings have gone up from the 80s and 90s to crazy values. But those were ones I remember before our time here."
Having sat in auctions from the age of 15, Jesal and Vishal say it was natural that they would join the family business, which they did in the early noughties, stepping into the footsteps of their fathers.
They say their early exposure to the property industry, noting down property yields at auction rooms and seeing how their fathers interacted with clients, helped them to make the jump. "They were very good at having an eye for a deal and that sort of skill is what we learned," Jesal says.
His and Vishal's first purchase was Cherry Pye Boutique, a lingerie shop in West Ealing, which they acquired for £251,000 at a Barnett Ross auction in 2005.
Jesal says: "When we joined, that was then they were at their peak at where they were in the market and I think over a run of auctions we bought something like 30 or 40 Barclays banks, and then we would exit and sell them in the car [on the way] home to different buyers.
"That probably, as a company, was one of the most fun, buzzy, times because every auction we were buying 10 buildings, literally signing contracts and selling them."
Credit crunch
But the landscape changed for Prideview and the rest of the property industry when the credit crunch hit in 2008, leading lenders to withdraw en masse and making it harder for investors to loans.
"It felt like the world was going to end at that point, especially in the property market," Jesal recalls. "We were all questioning what we were going to do. We looked at different businesses that maybe we'd go into and we'd forget the property market."
But that was not the case. Instead, Jesal and the rest of the management at Prideview chose to evolve the business, launching a management service in 2009 and an insurance service two years after.
It was around this time that Pritesh Patel, a director at the firm and cousin of the principals, joined the company and used his insurance background to support the family business. He now heads the agency business, which launched in 2018. Pritesh explains how the business changed in the years after the credit crunch.
"We pivoted to agency and a serviced space business because the old model of business, shall we say, just buying and selling, wasn't really washing anymore without the lending. So we realised that, if you want to go and make money, you need to go and help people."
Jesal adds: "We started using services in property to keep an income going, and we were still doing bits for the family office in the background, but the focus definitely shifted on to agency at that point."
The bosses say that whatever money the group did have, they reinvested it into London, buying pubs such as The Prince of Teck in Earls Court and the Blind Beggar in Whitechapel around 2010.
While it secured some lending, the principals said the group, like a number of other firms at that time, struggled to get the backing of the banks for larger deals which were being more frequently offered to the group as it expanded.
Jesal says: "We realised that we couldn't just buy things and trade them now, we need to do something, and we can't just throw these deals in the bin... So we said let's just agency these deals, we had a database of buyers and we'll just take a fee and act as the middleman."
The family members said their efforts to push into the agency and management side of the commercial real estate industry were aided by the relationships formed in the property auction rooms over the years.
"From our point of view, we got to know a lot of the people, a lot of the faces, and that helped the brand and the name grow over time," says Jesal. "I think those days were very important for the growth of the business, and the network that we have today and our connections," he adds.
Prideview today
"Right now, I would say the main three areas are probably retail, offices and leisure," says Pritesh, as he reflects on the group today, having started out as retail specialists. As well as growing into bigger offices and increasing its headcount, the size of the deals the group has been involved with has increased, with it is now established in the £10 million-plus market.
The Prideview bosses say the group has seen individual deals of up to £40 million pass through the office, including on the agency side and the strategic advisory or co-investment side of the business.
Recently it was instructed as strategic advisory consultants, on behalf of an overseas family office, for the circa £30 million acquisition of a freehold mixed-use estate in London's Fitzrovia, part of the Great Portland Estate.
It was also tasked with executing the disposal of £10 million of the peripheral parts of the estate. Jesal reflects on the deal: "That was satisfying, not just from a profit point of view, but also to show the evolution of the business and that we've got here and we're involved in things like this."
Pritesh argues that a lot of the management believe their deal to secure the site for and develop their current premises at 43 Church Road in Stanmore, known as Prideview Place, has been the group's best deal in its history.
The group's leaders say Prideview is also doing more co-investment deals through its family office, Eastway Estates, including partnering with a high-profile sports personality in Acton.
Jesal says the family office, which has a portfolio of circa £50 million, has become increasingly active over the last year and a half. He also says it wants to build up a healthy portfolio, with most of the leaders in their 40s.
"We believe in the market now," says Jesal, "and we push most of our own family money into London which, when the market gets good, is untouchable. So the fact that London is sitting on our doorstep and the contracts are coming to us at the moment, we need to take advantage where we can at sensible prices."
Vishal adds: "We effectively have two arms, we have the family office and we have an agency. The agency is purely acting for investors, brokering based on their own requirements.
"The family office is more complex, dealing with slightly more risky assets and we also have a speed, which is also allowing a lot of people to co-invest with us. Because some people want to invest by co-investing, without doing the dirty work, but some people want all the risk. So there are both options."
Across the 40 years Prideview has been in business, the internet and online platforms have transformed how properties are bought and sold, with the principals highlighting how social media is having an increasing role in the world of commercial real estate.
But the bosses agree that good relationships are still key. Jesal says: "One thing that hasn't changed and can't be replicated with all the social media and online additions to the property industry is actually your relationships and your ability to deliver and to do that consistently for 40 years.
"So even after all these years, property is still, at a certain level, about relationships and those relationships have lasted a long time."