Colliers International has made its first external hire for a new dedicated UK PRS team.
Toby Nicholson, currently associate director in the JLL residential investment team, will join later this year as senior director in a team fronted by Andre James, head of national capital markets.
Nicholson has spent more than 11 years in the residential market and the past three at JLL.
The team, which will eventually include 10 fee earners, will use existing staff as well as hiring externally to take advantage of the growing number of PRS deals around the UK.
Colliers hopes to cash in on its relationships in North America, which include some of the largest PRS investors now pushing into the UK market.
The firm has a 35-strong team active in the American multi-family housing sector, headed up by Brian Ward, while former parent company FirstService, which specialises in rental management, oversees over 1.5m houses across North America.
Earlier this year, LaSalle Investment Management poached JLL’s head of PRS investment Tom Henry, who founded JLL’s dedicated PRS team in 2012, as a director of residential transactions.
