Approach
We buy well.
Improve intelligently.
Own for the long term.
This isn't a fund or a platform. It's two people, their own money, and a process we don't skip steps on. No investment committee, no outside capital.
Find
Off-market first, through people we already know.
Most of what we buy comes to us before it is listed — from agents we have used for years, contractors, solicitors and other owners in the same towns. We would rather see ten buildings quietly than bid against twenty people in an open process.
Mispriced through neglect, not location, means exactly that: a solid building in a street people want to live on, let down by a leaking roof, a dead boiler, tired flats and an owner who stopped spending on it. That we can fix.
We walk past the opposite: a smart-looking building in a place with nothing holding it up — one big employer, no shops, no reason for someone to stay past a year.
- 01
Find
Off-market first, through people we already know.
Most of what we buy comes to us before it is listed — from agents we have used for years, contractors, solicitors and other owners in the same towns. We would rather see ten buildings quietly than bid against twenty people in an open process.
Mispriced through neglect, not location, means exactly that: a solid building in a street people want to live on, let down by a leaking roof, a dead boiler, tired flats and an owner who stopped spending on it. That we can fix.
We walk past the opposite: a smart-looking building in a place with nothing holding it up — one big employer, no shops, no reason for someone to stay past a year.
- 02
Assess
Careful numbers, every floor walked, an honest works list.
We check the numbers on the assumption that things cost more and take longer than we would like. If the numbers only work with everything going right, they don't work.
One of us walks the whole building before we commit — every floor, the roof space, the cellar, behind the boarded-up door. Photographs and floor plans hide the things that cost real money.
The works list is written honestly at that point, not after exchange. If we cannot say what a job will cost, we say so and price it high rather than pretend.
- 03
Improve
Fabric, heating and layout come before finish.
The order matters. Roof, windows, damp at its source, then insulation and heating, then how the rooms are laid out, and only then anything you would notice in a photograph.
Doing it the other way round means ripping out new kitchens in three years because the wall behind them was never dry. Cosmetic work sits on top of sound work, never instead of it.
The measure we use is simple: does someone living here feel the difference in January? Warm, dry, quiet, sensibly proportioned rooms with storage. That is the work worth paying for.
- 04
Own
We keep what we buy, and we run it ourselves.
We are not developers and we are not a fund. There is no sale date pencilled in and nobody waiting to be paid out, so decisions get made on what is right for the building over ten years rather than what tidies up a set of accounts this year.
Day to day, that means we answer the phone. Repairs go to a retained team we know and pay properly, so jobs get done once. Adam is in the buildings, not reading reports about them.
Every building gets a fabric check each year and a share of a rolling improvement budget — a bathroom, a boiler, a rewire, a roof — whether or not anything has gone wrong. Long tenancies and low turnover are the result we are aiming at, and the clearest sign the rest of it is working.
Why it holds up
Nothing here depends on optimism.
- Buildings you can go and look at
- Everything we talk about is standing, owned and let. There is nothing to project or model — you can walk past it.
- Two people, both hands-on
- Jonathan and Adam make every decision between them. Nothing waits for a committee, and nobody is presenting a building they have never stood in.
- The same discipline every time
- The process doesn't loosen because a building looks exciting. If it fails the walk-through or the numbers, we pass — and we have passed on plenty.
Everything we talk about is standing, owned and let. There is nothing to project or model — you can walk past it.
Jonathan and Adam make every decision between them. Nothing waits for a committee, and nobody is presenting a building they have never stood in.
The process doesn't loosen because a building looks exciting. If it fails the walk-through or the numbers, we pass — and we have passed on plenty.
See how this reads across the portfolio.
View our portfolioAcquisitions
Have a property
opportunity?
We look at residential and mixed-use buildings in and around the towns we already operate in. Direct approaches welcome. General enquiries are handled here too.