There can be few people with more experienceof marketing and selling prime central Londonresidential developments than CBRE’s head ofresidential, Mark Collins.He knows a bit about football too – in fact, we metthe day before the FA Cup final, where Collins, in hisrole as chairman of the FA Cup Committee, donnedhis best blazer and introduced the teams to thisyear’s dignitary, Blackpool and England legendJimmy Armfield. He is also a director of his beloved Fulham FC,where he got to know the new England boss ratherwell. Collins is full of praise for Roy Hodgson, andsays that when Fulham went on their terrific UEFACup odyssey in 2010, people in the game overseashad nothing but respect for the experiencedmultilingual manager. “I think he’ll do a great job forEngland,” says Collins.Alongside his passion for football, Collins also findsthe time to put a tremendous amount of energy in tohis property career, a path that has taken a consistentupward trajectory.When he first left college, Collins went to work forBritish Airways for four years, between 1978 and1982, leaving to start his property journey at Bridgersestate agents in Cobham, Surrey. Bridgers became part of the Hamptons Group, andthere Collins began a 14-year spell with the company.“For the first six years I was based in Surrey, coveringCobham, Weybridge and Woking. I then moved tosouth-west London, which was then the Taylor Dixon

Porter arm of Hamptons, and then moved again toArlington Street, which was Hamptons HQ, in 1989.” With three colleagues, he tried to buy Hamptonsthrough a management buyout but was “frustratingly”foiled by a rival bid. “We had a good bid and werefunded by 3i; but it was a very interesting period and Ilearned a lot in that time,” he says.Then in 1996, Collins was introduced to MohamedAl Fayed and was asked to launch Harrods Estates.“It was a fantastic opportunity, “ he says. “We built up the business from scratch. We covered sales,lettings and asset management.” During this time, thecompany launched and sold some landmark primeLondon schemes, including Harrods Village, OneHans Crescent, and Trevor Square.When Harrods, including Harrods Estates, was soldto the Qatari royal family in 2010, Collins was on thelookout for a fresh challenge. A chance meeting with Martin Samworth, the UKmanaging director of CBRE, resulted in Collins beingtaken on to establish a residential division at theglobal property giant. “I left Harrods Estates on 31January after 15 years’ service, and started at CBREon 1 February,” he says. Significantly, by this stageCollins had been working in central London for 22years and in the property industry for nearly 30.He has taken to the new role with gusto, revelling inthe opportunities that come with the backing of acompany that has 300 offices worldwide and nearly30,000 employees.“As an outsider looking in I was always fascinatedby CBRE. It’s a global business, the number oneprovider across a whole spectrum of services, and yetdidn’t really have a presence in the residential sector.Obviously lots of fantastic work had been done interms of land sales, particularly in central London,and also on acquisition, on development consultancy,on funding, planning, valuation and so on – so inevery aspect of the upstream process CBRE weremarket leaders, but downstream they weren’t in thatspace. I never quite understood why CBRE hadn’t

GEORGE SELL talks toMark Collins, head of

residential at CBRE, about hisand CBRE Residential’s flying starts

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entered the resi space in a sales and marketingcapacity,” says Collins.This last piece of the jigsaw is now in place andpicking up momentum. “What we are creating now is the sales and marketing opportunity within thedownstream piece, and completing a 360° service.One of the things I learned at a very early stage of mycareer, which is probably even more important now, isthat a number of clients would ideally like to go to justone provider who can offer the complete service –whether it’s buying commercial buildings, hotels,serviced apartments, residential and so on,” he adds.“At CBRE, the commercial entity is incrediblysuccessful worldwide, so to add the resi offering isreally exciting. In terms of people, we are now a teamof 10 directly in sales and marketing, with another fivein research. Plus we have our investment team whodeal with resi finance so across the business as awhole there are around 90 people who now deal withresidential property in some capacity.”Based in a dedicated W1 residential sales office,Collins and his team are focused on “providing thehighest level of service we can to our globalcustomers”. “We concentrate on new developmentsand investment opportunities in central London, withone exception – a very nice scheme in Newbury beingdeveloped by Standard Life. We are not in the second-hand market, we will have to see how that develops inthe future, and we’re also considering whether weshould be in the lettings space.”Not straying too far from his roots, Collins alsoworks closely with Godfrey Winterson of HamptonsInternational, providing the firm with a developmentand sales & marketing consultancy. CBRE has had asuccessful joint venture with Hamptons since 2001,which was extended in 2011 to the entire Countrywidenetwork of 46 estate agency trading brands.“Working with a company [CBRE] that has a global platform has huge advantages,” says Collins.“Recently I was presenting a scheme to clients in the

Middle East, while two of my colleagues were out inKazakhstan and Moscow, and we were all workingwith our local teams on the ground, who facilitatedone-to-one meetings with high-net-worth clients. Wehave a team dedicated to taking exhibitions to whatyou could call the more traditional markets – HongKong, Singapore, Kuala Lumpur and so on – and weare also very active in China and Thailand. We’re notonly looking at traditional markets but we’re putting anemphasis on emerging markets, where we see a lot offuture opportunities to promote our developments.”In the 14 months since Collins joined, the residivision has made significant progress. “We’ve puttogether a great team, which we are still building.CBRE is serious about this so it’s very much aboutpicking and developing the right people. And we’reworking very hard to build our reputation within thecentral London residential market.”One way Collins conducts business is to form strongrelationships with buyers in order to get a feel for whatis the right purchase for them, whether an investment,a second home or a combination of the two.“It’s very important that our clients know that this is a very hands-on business – I enjoy the travelling,meeting clients and getting an understanding of what

they are looking for. There’s no doubt that, particularlyin Asia, the buyers are becoming more and morediscerning. They know all about the locations, thecomparables in a given area, and what thespecification of a development should be.”CBRE Residential is currently promoting nine livedevelopments, including 10 Trinity Square, near TowerHill; Roman House, in the City; 4-6 Queen’s Gate inKensington (above); Langham Square in Putney (left)and Fitzroy Place, the redevelopment of the formerMiddlesex Hospital. They range in price from £600per square foot to £2,500 per square foot.Its developer client base is expanding, somethingwhich Collins hopes will address the “challenging”lack of stock in its target markets. He is particularlyexcited by the potential for involvement in mixed-useschemes, which can see a developer client benefitingfrom the full gamut of CBRE’s services.“More and more schemes here in central Londonwill be mixed-use – combining elements of office,hotel, residential, retail and serviced apartmentsspace. We can cover all those aspects at CBRE,running right through from consultancy to sales andmarketing. It’s very exciting, and we believe we arecreating something unique,” he concludes. sh

supplychainMark Collins with FA Cup committee