Pantazis Therianos is the chief executive of luxury residential developer and investor Euroterra Capital. It has a £100m portfolio in prime central London, with sales offices in Asia and a resort business in Europe. He told Emma Rosser about running the business during the coronavirus crisis.
I live in one of our developments in a penthouse in Bayswater, W2, and this is my fifth week in lockdown. I have friends that say they are bored and have nothing to do, but for me it is actually very busy and the working day starts early.
I wake up around 7am. I read, I have breakfast and at 8am I call my teams in the Far East. There are four offices: Shanghai, Wuhan, Hong Kong and Beijing. I speak to every office, every day and once a week we have a call with everyone all together.
In Asia we have around 20 employees. The teams are there to market our residential properties in prime central London and support the agents. The conversation this morning (17 April) is about taking those first steps, especially in Wuhan.
It is the first week of recovery in China and they have started slowly going back to the office. On the first day everybody was nervous. They haven’t been out for many months. It was strange, but it was a celebration too.
In the first quarter, because the pandemic was in Asia, we had less buyer interest, but the investors were more serious and the conversion rate was higher. Now in Asia they are back after three months in lockdown and the market is getting closer to normality. There are more enquiries and people want to see properties. They ask us to send them marketing material and to arrange virtual tours, but we don’t see as many serious offers.
Some see this as an opportunity to buy cheap. We received an offer from a buyer that is well known to us for freehold property, 50% off the asking price. We have maintained healthy liquidity in the business to weather tough times and we don’t entertain very low offers.
After I finish with Asia I move on to speaking with our London employees. We have a marketing department, accountants, operations, consultants, planners, architects and designers.
We have four projects at various stages. Two projects – in Nottingham Place, W1, and Queen’s Gardens, W2 – are coming to an end. There are challenges in getting the materials to furnish the buildings and delays with deliveries.
The bank called us and asked if we needed any help. I was really surprised about this. The Queen’s Gardens project has a deadline of the end of May and the bank said we can extend our arrangement for three months. I don’t think we need it, but you don’t know – maybe tomorrow we will have complete lockdown and our builders can’t travel.
There are two projects in planning. I had a call with our planners three days ago and they told us the good news that we can now have online planning committees because of the new law in the Coronavirus Act. They said to me, “You don’t have to worry.” Because I was worried. They usually take eight weeks; it is already delayed.
We have a few empty properties, approximately 20 studios and 20 one- and two-bedroom flats that we are offering to the NHS. Some of those are recently completed buildings, which I offered for staff accommodation for people who work at St Mary’s Hospital and commute to Paddington.
Tenants from countries that are safer than the UK left in March. They made the decision to break the contract and left. We have a service and manage lettings in W2 for our clients. I speak to landlords and next week I will have more conversations about tenants that have not paid. What we have found is people stayed and paid or they left. But you cannot evict them and people are worrying.
I always have lunch, but I never take a break. I speak to a long-term partner who has become a friend and I eat. Staying at home for more than a month as a developer shows you what a home really needs. My father is 65 years old; he has never stayed one whole month in the house. Nobody has done this, but it is a good learning curve. I appreciate the home, the rooftop, garden, lifts and porter service, now more than ever.
I am Greek and my family lives in Lefkada. The company has a resort business in Greece and across Europe. We have around 100 employees and I speak to the general manager. They should be open now, it is the Easter holiday.
The hotel and resort industry is one of the worst industries to be in at the moment. The resorts are 100% owned and we manage them on behalf of our clients in Europe and Asia, like a branded residence. Almost everybody has moved their holiday to later in the year.
In Greece, they took decisions very early and there are far fewer Covid-19 cases. Greek tourism will be stronger as a result. But I don’t know what will happen at the end of May or June.
I know the housing market will recover over time too. London will recover and I am feeling positive. During the first quarter everybody was happy, but we could see what was happening in China. Now it is the same here, but you see positive news in other parts of the world.
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