Keith Dowley and David Turner launched DTRE in the middle of a recession, but as the company heads into its seventh year, the pair will be joined by two star signings keen on achieving new goals
“I think a lot of people thought we were a bit crazy,” says David Turner, of his and Keith Dowley’s decision to set up a business as the recession hit in 2009.
It was a bold move, but having already worked together as partners at niche industrial firm Holley Blake, they decided to pair up, quit their corporate jobs at CBRE and go it alone again.
Six and a half years later, the self-confessed deal junkies are still going strong at the helm of one of the UK’s most successful niche industrial and office agencies – Dowley Turner Real Estate.
Now they have poached two of the industrial sector’s leading agents as the company looks towards its next stage of growth.
David Emburey from JLL’s capital markets team, and Mark Webster, Cushman & Wakefield’s EMEA head of logistics and industrial, will join the firm next spring.
With the added manpower, DTRE can take on more business.
And while the market remains in a state of flux following the EU referendum, Dowley and Turner do not seem concerned.
The pair have been working together for more than 20 years. They were founding partners at Holley Blake, which was bought by CBRE in July 2006.
After three years at CBRE, they both decided it was time for a change.
Dowley recalls: “We resigned in August 2009, the world was in a pretty bad place at that point in time, and I don’t think many people in their right mind would have thought, ‘Now is a good time to go and set up a business’. We didn’t know what the business was going to look like, or what it was going to be called.”
But they knew that they worked well together, and they knew which work environment suited them better.
“We thoroughly enjoyed it,” says Dowley of his time at CBRE. “But, ultimately, if you’re not wired to be part of a big corporate machine, it’s quite hard to give your all for something where you don’t have any ownership in it.” Dowley admits that during this corporate period of his career, he still wore jeans to the office every day.
And then they spotted their opportunity to move on. During their three years at CBRE, nobody had set up a business to replace Holley Blake in the market.
There was also no one offering both agency and investment services from the same practice. So they decided to fill that gap.
“Somebody once said, it’s not when you start, it’s who you start with that matters. And Dowley and I looked at each other and thought actually, what we’d done before, we can do again,” says Turner.
The next stage was to start attracting business. But, with the recession in full swing in 2009, timing was a challenge.
“It was quite hard work setting up because we had absolutely no business,” Turner says.
“The day we opened, we had not a single instruction. We had to start everything from scratch. It was probably a good year without any income.”
Setting up shop in such turbulent times, coupled with the fact that they had both sacrificed their bonuses for the year, meant that it took time to get business, and fees, through the door.
But, despite the barriers to entry of getting out of a big company and setting up on their own, the pair pulled it off, and are now looking to take on even more market share.
“We want to crack on and grow the business, without losing the company’s niche feel,” says Turner.
Bringing Emburey and Webster to the team as partners marks the firm’s next stage in organic growth. The news of the hires hit headlines in the same month. Turner admits that they had been talking to them on and off for some time, although conversations did not become serious until more recently.
He says: “We thought to ourselves, getting both of them at the same time would work really well for us because it would take us up that notch, hopefully in quite a quick period of time.”
Webster specialises in the occupational market and Emburey will be joining as an investment partner.
The two recruits will bring the firm’s total to 20, and their individual expertise and market knowledge from their previous roles will be used to fuel DTRE’s next stage of expansion.
Dowley says: “They like us, we like them. We sat down, we discussed a deal. It was agreed.
“It’s an extension and an expansion of what we do already. They have obviously got their clients and contacts which hopefully they can use once they join us, but they may not be able to and time will tell whether they can bring those client relationships with them, but that’s an educated gamble we’ve taken.
“We have trust in them as individuals to be generators of business and that the sum of the parts, us and them together, will be a winning formula.”
Although the recruits mark an impressive milestone for the firm, Dowley and Turner are keen to keep an individual feel to the firm.
“We are deal junkies. We love a good deal and can’t resist getting stuck in”
This is about refreshing it and starting a new chapter.
Dowley says: “You have to reinvent yourself along the way every now and then, and I guess bringing Embers and Webbo [as he calls them] in is a refreshing of DTRE six and a half years in. If you don’t do that, then you get bored and you think, ‘what do we do to evolve?’”
While the rest of the market enters a period of contemplation, the two remain confident in the logistics sector, particularly in increased interest from the institutional investor market.
“There are a few clouds on the horizon,” says Turner.
“But I think the headroom in the logistics sector is such that it can afford a little bit of a dip in the economy and still have an imbalance between supply and demand, so we are set well.
“Investor sentiment in the sector has got stronger,” adds Dowley. “Sovereign wealth funds now recognise that a 1m sq ft shed in the Golden Triangle let on a 30-year lease is as attractive as a trophy office in the city. I would say it is having its moment in the sun.”
Before new partners come onboard, Dowley and Turner want to do as many deals as they can.
“We are quite deal junkies really,” says Turner. “We do love a good deal and can’t resist getting stuck into it. The day we get bored of doing that is the day we pack it in.”
Working together
“We love doing what we do, we absolutely love it. I never had a day when I think I don’t want to come to work,” Dowley confesses.
Despite working together since 1995, the duo say they have never had an argument throughout their careers. They spend so much time together that they even booked to go on holiday in the same resort this summer.
“We muddle on together,” says Turner, “like an old married couple. We know each other like the backs of our hands. Sometimes I think to myself how fortunate we are that we have found this relationship with each other and we founded the business together that keeps going. It’s been phenomenal.”
Standout deal
DTRE was involved in the largest ever single asset sale in the logistics market earlier this year.
The firm advised John Cutts’ Mountpark Logistics on the sale of a 1.3m sq ft distribution centre, which it developed and let to Amazon, in Bardon, Leicestershire.
The scheme sold for £126m – a 4.75% yield to BNP Paribas REIM on behalf of a Korean investor.
The new recruits
Mark Webster
Former position – Cushman & Wakefield’s co-chair of EMEA logistics and industrial
Webster’s clients include occupiers such as John Lewis, Marks & Spencer, Sainsbury’s, Poundland and Boden, as well as landlords Prologis, Roxhill, Stoford and SEGRO. He had been at Cushman & Wakefield since 2006, having previously been Knight Frank’s head of industrial agency.
David Emburey
Former position – senior director in JLL’s capital markets team
Emburey has been at JLL for 12 years. He was previously a director at CB Hillier Parker before joining Doherty Baines in 2000. He has worked with clients including Aberdeen Asset Management, Brookfield/IDI Gazeley, Brockton Capital, Infrared, Aviva Investors and Capital Industrial.
