The White family have embraced an opportunity to continue working with Ray White’s top fee writer Andrew Jolliffe in a new boutique vehicle called HTL Property.
The family have a significant shareholding in HTL Property, continuing their relationship with top pub broker Mr Jolliffe, the number one international performer in Ray White for the last three years.
HTL is a boutique business created with Daniel Dragicevich to cater for the specialised markets of hotels, tourism and leisure (HTL) asset classes.
Ray White Group director Dan White said HTL aligned with the family’s long-held belief in the capability of ambitious operators to embrace leadership and develop their own market-leading businesses, and their success came as no surprise.
“We don’t simply see ourselves as a brand. A brand can only take you so far,” Mr White said.
“The value we seek to provide is in challenging our members to chase their potential, but also investing in and developing our thinking and platforms so we remain relevant/thrive in the future for the benefit of our members and clients.
“We have seen an increasing interest from many commercial operators in so much of the systems, structures and technology that has been developed by our residential business.
“The fundamentals of what makes a great residential business is no different [to] that which makes a great commercial business.
“But we do think that the residential industry has moved faster to focus on improvements in lead generation, productivity and efficiency offered by new technology and thinking than the commercial industry.
“Traditionally, the commercial real estate market has been dominated by international corporations, all domiciled in the US or UK and mainly being listed companies. As these groups have grown and increasingly diversified their earnings into non-brokerage areas as dictated by shareholders, a new business model built around personal leadership and ownership, and focused on a market segment, is gaining momentum.
“Clients have and will continue to relate to people they trust and have confidence in, regardless of which brand they operate under.
“And for the agents themselves, they thrive in an environment in which enables them [to] provide the deepest value to their customers.”
HTL Property was born out of the desire to offer a deep value agency product in the hospitality property asset class, Mr Jolliffe said, with a unapologetic focus on “transactions and best of breed participants”.
“We believe a risk with the fascination around boutique businesses, particularly those indexed to property, is to be viewed as small or under-gunned,” he said.
“Accordingly, this is one of the key reasons why I felt it so important to continue the mutually beneficial relationship with the White family, albeit while not under the Ray White brand … to ensure our client base enjoys a level of connectivity with Australasia’s leading real estate family and the vast international family office network to which it is attended.”
Mr Jolliffe said that, after eight prosperous years with the Ray White Group, he wanted to take the hotels business in a different direction.
“The conversation with Dan White was actually a very easy one to have. Particularly given the truly entrepreneurial way in which the White family operate,” Mr Jolliffe said.
“That omnipresent belief that, with a burning restlessness to want to improve, your best days are ahead of you is wholly central to their business DNA.
“Hence a discussion about repositioning the shape of our offering in order to incorporate a platform for outside brokerage talent to join, and to do so at a time when we feel the market is looking for a more tactile, more cerebral relationship with the industry of transactional agency, was both obvious and exciting.”
HTL Property has attracted Dan Dragicevich, former National Head of Pubs at CBRE, and will look to add further leading brokerage talent to its national footprint over the next year.
“We have been forecasting a further tightening of yields, potentially up to 100 basis points across both the accommodation hotel and traditional pub sector, with multiple fundamentals such as limited product and the continuation of well-priced capital driving this outcome,” Mr Jolliffe said.
