Tue 8 Apr 2008
Builder's Breakfast with Grant Bovey.
In a market where amateur investors are pulling back, it is refreshing to meet a man who is willing to put his money where his mouth is. Rupert Bates talks to buy-to-let entrepreneur, Grant Bovey.One colleague dared me to arrive at Richmond Lock to interview buy-to-let tycoon Grant Bovey brandishing a Flake chocolate bar. Another said she would happily munch, in public, any brand of confectionery from mini Mars bars to giant Toblerone's if it helped pay for her wedding.
Builder's Breakfast is confusing. Bovey is not a builder - yet - and the finest steaks this side of Las Pampas at the Argentine restaurant the Gaucho Grill in Richmond, Surrey, were very much lunch fare, not breakfast.
You may have missed the tabloid feeding frenzy of eight years ago, which was the marriage of Grant Bovey to the former golden girl of television Anthea Turner - tittle-tattle tale of celebrity and adultery that sadly sells some papers.
OK! magazine, which bought the rights to their wedding, then released pictures of the couple tucking into flakes, although they denied it was part of a Cadbury's sponsorship deal.
I was prepared to tiptoe round the episode, but Bovey confronts it head on: "Flake Gate. I'm the first to admit I have made mistakes, but I was ridiculed and persecuted in the papers. It was deeply upsetting because it portrayed me as someone I am not and I had no chance to defend myself. I rode it out."
And how. Although being a risk taker of the highest order, you still suspect Bovey should tighten those saddle bags a little, so fast is he now riding with his buy-to-let company Imagine Homes, coupled with its bespoke customer service business Imagine Private Clients.
Before we look at the business Bovey has built, let us remind those still not familiar with the name of another reason you might remember the face, this one portraying him in a far more flattering light. Six years ago for charity Bovey had a televised boxing bout with comedian Ricky Gervais, with real blood, sweat, tears and gum shields shed as the two were given professional training before slugging it out for real in the ring. "I was beaten up for six weeks, but my public persona changed overnight and I was not simply Anthea Turner's husband."
Armed with a bucket load of preconceptions, I was expecting to meet a bit of a prat. Who I did meet was a top bloke, if a touch too manicured for this industry, with a passion for property and a keen eye for a good bottle of South American red.
Enough of the minor celebrity stuff and down to business - and it is a significant business. First the facts and figures. Bovey founded the Imagine Group nearly five years ago as a buy-to-let specialist and now buys developer stock ahead of completion, before selling the majority of the homes to buy-to-let investors, who are then given a guaranteed rental income of 7.5 per cent for the first two years, with Imagine finding and managing tenants.
With another company called Veritas, a joint venture with HBOS, Bovey has around £250 million in investment equity and Imagine holds onto a percentage of the developer stock. "We acquire £500 million of property a year and the portfolio is currently exclusively UK. I find it odd that no major housebuilder has created a buy-to-let brand like us, considering it represents a significant percentage of their turnover," said Bovey, with a flotation of the company expected soon.
It sounds like an industry challenge and it is. "Housebuilding is a very complacent industry, which does very well by not trying too hard. It lacks innovation." I can think of a few builders pebble-dashing their walls with a well-known crumbly and flaky milk chocolate bar on hearing that rather sweeping generalisation.
However many seem quite happy to offload their properties to Bovey, anytime from six months to two years ahead of completion. "We have found that publicly-listed companies often want to record a transaction at a certain time and by selling to Imagine at an early stage their results are more favourable," said Bovey, adding that it saves developers sales and marketing costs and allows them to free-up stock and reinvest elsewhere. "I am offered about three sites a day, but am very careful about what I invest in. Would I ever build myself? It is a completely different skill set, but never say never."
Bovey conceived Imagine on a flight home from Dubai, after failing in an attempt to launch a project on the short-term lettings market in the Emirate. But Dubai has since served him well and he has an office there to cater for the growing number of Middle Eastern investors in the market for UK buy-to-let properties.
"My only knowledge of property at the time was personal experience and frustration. But I believe I have created a very reputable brand, with customer service essential. The way the UK consumer is treated is poor. That is why Imagine Private Clients was born, offering a bespoke service."
Bovey's right hand man is his group marketing director Keith Scarratt, who describes Imagine Private Clients as "offering a Coutts private banking style service". Scarratt, former managing director of Peter Knight's agency Phoenix, had worked with Bovey before. A few years ago Scarratt popped in for coffee at Imagine's Farnborough head office in Hampshire and the pair were back doing business.
Imagine has around 1,400 units to manage on an ongoing basis, while Imagine Furnishings, where Anthea Turner, who dressed the showhome at Richmond Lock, is heavily involved, is turning over £7 million a year.
Buy-to-let is always flagged as a barometer of the property market. Many investors who have bought new build in overcooked city centres are struggling to find tenants and feeling the heat, with auction lots now full of repossessions.
Bovey however remains sanguine. He probably has little choice. "There are naturally a lot of nerves about, but buy-to-let will get bigger." Bovey, through Veritas, will always hold onto a few flats he has invested in, thus remaining an investor as well as trader in the buy-to-let product.
His confidence is a by-product of developer nerves. With the new build buy-to-let market a different animal to second-hand, Bovey knows the housebuilding industry has targets to meet and year-ends writ large in diaries.
Imagine's portfolio covers anything from the boutique development of The Cheyne Apartments at Chelsea Wharf including an £8 million apartment that costs £600,000 to furnish, to one-bedroom apartments on an historic mill site in Shipley, West Yorkshire. The company expects to sell more than 800 units in the current financial year and forecasts turnover of £285 million.
The show house at Richmond Lock, the old Brunel University site, which is actually St Margaret's not Richmond, is a testimony to the attention to detail and luxury at the heart of the Imagine philosophy. Richmond Lock, acquired from Octagon a couple of phases in, won Gold in the Best Landscape Design category of the 2007 What House? Awards.
The show home has all the toys from commissioned photographs of Richmond landscapes to a pop up television at the end of the bedroom and the now de rigueur home cinema room. I was more impressed by the jelly babies in a bowl in the drawing room. A tabloid hack would probably have focused on a book in the bedroom called "Shaggy Dog and the terrible itch".
Bovey started business life in his home town of Nottingham in the rag trade, selling ladiesâ fashion retail. He beats you to it. "A great way to meet ladies." He then had his Dick Whittington moment and headed to London to seek his fortune and buying films and a television production company followed. Work with the Football Association and a professional footballers database fuelled his passion for the sport and Bovey is a Chelsea season ticket holder. His work in football and his Nottingham background brought him into contact with the late great Brian Clough, who referred to the young Bovey as 'Beau Brummell'.
Imagine's latest innovation is opening a buy-to-let showroom by the Hogarth roundabout in West London. It will have all the interactive, hi-tech gizmos, but will also be a walk-in information mine about UK cities ripe or not for investment, with details on capital growth and rental yield forecasts, as well as product availability and an auditorium for presentations.
Passing punters can learn about the markets in Liverpool, Birmingham or wherever and whether they are good, bad or ugly to invest in. "We are not into short-term selling - and will tell it how it is whether we have a portfolio in a particular area or not."
Imagine's residential portfolio is one of the biggest in the UK. Is Bovey heading for a fall? Those who do not know him, but think they do from the tabloids, hope he is. Those who know him wish this high wire entrepreneur the very best of luck.
First published in Show House Magazine March 2008.
The greatest care has been taken to ensure accuracy but some information contained within this article may have changed since it was first published.
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