Paul Smith never thought he would carry out a job interview in a park. But in the third Covid-19 lockdown, that is exactly what the West End office leasing stalwart found himself doing: strolling around Wandsworth Common, putting a prospective recruit through their paces. “We didn’t have our own offices at that point – and you weren’t meant to be at work anyway. But no one could stop us being outside,” he says with a grin. “A very nice little walk around the common it was too.”
Smith was recruiting for his new office agency, RX London, which he co-founded with eight others at the beginning of 2021. Established as a specialist practice covering central London, RX is partly built around the team that led H2SO – another boutique bought out by Colliers in 2014 – as well as big hitters from the likes of Savills and JLL.
Moving into its second year, the firm is looking to build on almost £1.6bn of investment deals and 500,000 sq ft of leasing deals, which include several eye-catching wins. In April, RX advised Nuveen on buying a 50% interest in the long leasehold of Belgrave House – which is let to Google and American Express – on Buckingham Palace Road, SW1, for £145.5m.
Then, in August, agents advised BMO on its £145.5m sale of Cassini House, a prime freehold office on St James Street, SW1, to the Hong Kong-based Kuok family – a deal which, at that point, was seen as a bellwether for the market.
Partner Simon Ewart-Perks, who helped found RX after nine years at Savills, led on the deal. “[Cassini House] was what the market was crying out for,” he says. “There were a few deals ongoing in the West End at the same time, but this was the perfect opportunity to openly market a prime block and test where the market was at… And it couldn’t have gone any better.”
Joined-up thinking
The team at RX London describes its approach as “progressive”. This means an attempt to escape the trappings of the larger agencies, Ewart-Perks says, and instead develop a more joined-up system of information sharing across the company. “Even though we work across all of London, and specialise in different disciplines, we are one team; there is no big firm ‘huddle’ mentality, no blocking your desk because you don’t want a colleague to see something.”
The agency’s head office is just off Carnaby Street, in Soho, W1. When I approach to meet the partners, a mariachi band blasts from one side of the famous shopping corridor, while excitable shoppers swarm the other. It was important that the Shaftesbury-owned site, which RX finally moved into last summer after a few months in a temporary space, was in a “happening part of town”, says Smith.
That dynamic helps make the agency feel “entrepreneurial and energetic”, adds partner Catherine Tilley, who works on flex office leasing, and also joined from Savills. “The clients we have taken across from our old firms knew we could do this already. But now we are all together there is a real buzz and a good atmosphere, which I think they like. Clients want that energy on their instructions.”
Meanwhile, across in the Square Mile, RX recently opened a satellite office to house its City team, spearheaded by former JLL office agency head Dan Burn. Smith says: “We wanted to do things slightly differently from H2SO. Back then we were multi-disciplined, but very much West End specialists.”
Part of the reason for setting up RX was to react to an increasing sense among occupiers that the two main central London markets – the West End and the City – were becoming less siloed.
“When it comes to leasing, it is really important that you have City specialists and West End specialists,” Smith continues. “Even at H2SO we would do the West End, Clerkenwell, Old Street, Paddington, King’s Cross, the South Bank – but we just didn’t do the Square Mile, which is still a slightly different market. And that meant getting in some City expertise.”
Pandemic expansion
With well-known City operators like Burn coming in to join other London real estate big hitters such as Rob Hayes and Ed Betts, one could be forgiven for thinking RX was a little top-heavy. Indeed, Smith says, having a high proportion of experienced partners has been instrumental in helping the team compete with their better-resourced competitors at bigger agencies.
But a hiring spree over the last 12 months has seen several younger faces coming in to support the operation. Despite the chaos Covid-19 has wrought on the office market at large – and notwithstanding the occasional outdoor job interview – the partners think the pandemic has helped that process.
“I think one of the pluses of Covid is that it has created a lot of disruption in the market,” Ewart-Perks says. “That has made it easier to recruit people because of dissatisfaction with some of the bigger firms and the old way of doing things. A lot of people are coming to us rather than the other way around. It’s been a much easier process than it would have been in other parts of the cycle.”
Now, after a year of rapid growth which doubled RX’s headcount to 17 fee earners, with two more set to join in March, the firm is looking to stabilise, Smith says. “This time last year, we had a vision as to where we wanted to be as a small practice, and we got there quickly. We may need more people at some point, looking at the way it’s going, but it will not be at the rate of growth we saw in the first year.”
Nonetheless, he maintains that RX will expand as the workload increases. If predictions that central London office investment volumes will hit £15bn this year come true, that looks almost certain to happen. “We want to offer a top service, and in real estate that means having people on the ground. I know a lot of stuff has gone online now, but most of this job is just hard work,” Smith says. “You have to chuck the mud against the wall. Things don’t just happen.”
See how RX London’s transaction volumes compare in EG’s On-Demand Rankings >>
© Portraits by Tom Campbell; Large RX London group shot: Nick Andrews; Cassini House: RX London
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