Meet the Founders
Richard Davies
Founding Partner
Richard is considered to be one of Europe’s leading property investment professionals. He has worked in the property industry for 20 years and started and managed a stream of successful businesses. He has pioneered new revenue streams for the property industry and has run his own highly successful property development company. This knowledge and experience led Richard to become the co-founder of Property Secrets, which with Richard’s help, became one of the leading providers of property investment opportunities in the Central and Eastern Europe region, sourcing over $500 million of property across eight countries. These projects delivered an impressive and record breaking average 37% capital growth per annum.
Richard is a master at finding and analysing property markets and is considered by many to be a visionary in this asset class. “To make money from property it’s critical to understand the market dynamics. Take commercial property for example. It’s been completely overpriced in the last few years, with the cost of borrowing at 6-7% and yields at only 5-6%. Now, as long as you have the cash deposit, your borrowing costs are 4-5% and yields have grown to 6-7% and more. You won’t get these returns with every project, but then you look to see where you can add value for long term capital growth, by adding an extra storey or renegotiating the terms of the lease”.
Contact Richard direct
Steve Bolton
Group Founding Partner
Steve is a serial entrepreneur who has been building successful businesses and property companies since 1994. Platinum Property Partners, is a business based around Steve’s tried, tested and proven property investment strategies, it is the world’s first property investment franchise organisation. He has produced educational DVD programmes on property investing and written the book, ‘The Seven Biggest Mistakes Made by Property Investors and How to Avoid Them.’
Steve is regularly featured in the Financial Times, broadsheets and on TV as a property and businesses expert.
What Steve doesn’t believe in are organisations selling false hope to individuals who should not be considering investing in the property market. “Offers of ‘easy-money, get rich quick and no money down’ may sound great but the reality is that these are the types of investments that caused problems for buy to let investors from 2002 to 2008.”
Contact Steve direct
Nick Carlile
Group Founding Partner
Nick is a qualified Quantity Surveyor who has worked in the property construction and investment industry since his early twenties. His main skill is in being able to identify, manage and overcome the risk of investing in large scale UK and international property projects with gross development values in the hundreds of millions. “For me property is the best investment I can make. It’s something I understand, it’s tangible and unlike shares, which can be wiped out overnight, property always retains some value”.
One thing that Nick never takes heed of are sensationalistic headlines and inaccurate property reports by the media. “I don’t really understand why the media always talk about ‘THE property market’ suggesting there is only one in the whole of the UK. In my experience there are hundreds of thousands of micro markets. Successful property investing is about understanding these micro markets in the short and long term.”