Through our close-knit relationships across our firm, our full range of expertise is at your fingertips. Helping you deliver first class service to your clients across their personal and business worlds. Jenny Sargeant, partner lead of our specialist private banking team sits down with residential real estate partners Helen Curtis-Goulding and Sarah Conibeere.
In a nutshell what's your area of expertise?
Helen Curtis-Goulding (HCG): Acting on behalf of UHNWs, property investors, developers and private banks on their prime residential London property matters from disposals, purchases, lettings and financings.
Sarah Conibeere (SC): Yes, we are both prime London residential specialists and sit on both sides of transactions acting for UHNWs and private banks.
When do you come across private banks or their clients in your practice?
SC: Either acting for UHNWs customers of private banks or for the private banks themselves across the full spread of residential matters.
HCG: Where we have most interaction with a private bank is often when a complex residential property issue comes up and either the borrower wants comfort to exchange or has already exchanged and is needing to get a private bank comfortable in the run up to completion. Here our role is to bring everyone up to speed on the key issues quickly and give clear, practical advice on what the risk levels are and how they can be mitigated.
Can you give an example of where you best add value?
HCG: We use our wide experience and knowledge of the market to condense legal issues down to “what really matters”. This allows us to talk clients through an issue and consider whether there are practical solutions and if those translate to a reduction in property value or affect resale ability. What we don’t do is give out legal essays or go down rabbit holes. We set out an issue and offer clients options endorsed by our opinion on what we think the best solution for that client is.
SC: We are very commercial in our approach based on our breadth of experience and the insight we have into the different perspectives at play as we act both on borrower and bank side. We know what kind of issue will cause an issue for marketability and resale and those that are a “non-point”. We are also highly attuned to the high levels of service expected by HNW and UHNW clients.
Do you have a mantra or saying that best describes how you work?
HCG: Be solutions driven.
SC: Clients want answers not problems.
What do you enjoy most about what you do?
SC: For me what I enjoy most is the result – it is a great feeling being able to deliver for a client especially when that is a home.
HCG: I enjoy working with lots of different people. I love that the phone is always ringing. Our clients are often emotionally invested in our transactions and when we deliver that new home to them, we often receive very heartfelt appreciation. I feel very proud (both personally and of our team) when we deliver meaningful results to our clients in a way that reduces the stress, they experience in what can often be a tricky process.
What do you think is key to assisting UHNW families in your area of expertise?
SC: Getting them what they want – AKA winning. Achieving their desired outcome and making them feel that they are the number one priority on your desk.
HCG: To deliver solutions you need to know your client and what they want to achieve. UHNWs are all different and high emotional EQ is really important in quickly understanding how a client prefers to communicate, whether they are a detail person or want to just hear headline points, whether they have intermediaries who will liaise on their behalf and what are the dynamics underlying these relationships. You cannot just assume, you must listen, learn and tailor to each client. Most UHNWs are time-poor and so what we really want to do is reduce the stress of the process for them and deliver them back time. We always remember how crucial transactions involving houses are to our clients. We do these transactions every day, but they are often key life moments for our clients, and they want to feel they are being looked after and for many clients this includes a degree of handholding.
How can we best bring together “business” and “personal” requirements for our private clients to deliver first class service for them?
HCG: A residential purchase is often the beginning of a journey that a client is making and it is helpful to have wider conversations with them to hear about how this fits in with their long-term plans so we can involve specialist colleagues at the outset to provide strategic advice. That could be tax or trusts planning, family law matters or corporate matters. The focus for the client is having connected, strategic advice that saves them time and helps them build trusted partnerships.
SC: You have to listen and anticipate each client’s needs and engage with them in a way that allows them to open up and talk about the whole picture so you can help them look ahead and plan for wider needs they may have but often be unaware of. This is very personal to each client. For example, a prime London residential purchase might for one client be part of their wider investments prompting a review of their tax, investment and succession strategies. For others, it might be the purchase of a family base or home for a child studying in the UK, prompting thoughts about family asset protection, visas and inheritance tax planning. Where we are a trusted advisor, we can help clients stand back and see all the issues and have a strategic plan that saves them time and can produce a single point of assistance for them across a range of their needs.
How do you help private banks deliver first class service to their clients?
HCG: By providing clear, concise and commercial advice we can help private banks digest legal issues quickly and understand whether they are real issues from a risk perspective. This helps banks to deliver agile and responsive services to their clients in line with the first-class service expectations of their UHNW clients.
SC: By knowing that in private banking, the most important part is the relationship between the client and their bank and our part in that is to represent the bank in the best light possible by ensuring that all advisors (bank, borrower’s solicitor, valuers and us) are on the same page and pulling in the same direction. We do this by being proactive, efficient and pragmatic in our approach.
What would be the "one thing to watch out for" coming ahead in your area?
HCG: The hot topics in the residential space are a) the Renters Reform Bill and b) the leasehold extension reforms to remove the current “marriage value” consideration for landlords and increase standard terms to 999 years to make extending leases cheaper for tenants.
SC: The Renters Reform Bill has had a lot of attention from lenders concerned about the erosion of the predictability of ASTs when it comes to enforcement. In practice though, in the prime London residential space, the impact will probably be lower than expected because property values are higher and so the rent tends to take lettings above the AST threshold (as common law tenancies). Private banks already understand that it is still possible to bring these higher value lettings to an end at the end of their term or in a breach situation but that the process takes longer and is more expensive. The most important point for private banks when looking at these common law tenancies is checking that any rent paid less frequently than six months in advance should trigger an assessment of whether rent paid in advance should be held at the bank in a blocked account as part of the security package (which may be appropriate depending on the borrower covenant strength).
Our connections across our firm are here to provide you with all the expertise you need so if you want to continue any of these conversations or have any residential queries that you are facing, please do feel free to get in touch with of Helen and Sarah.
For more information about the Residential team please click here.
For any Private Banking related queries please contact Jenny Sargeant.
