Property is often a cornerstone of a well-balanced investment portfolio for high-net-worth individuals, offering both stability and potential for significant returns.
But successfully building, managing and expanding such a portfolio requires deep market knowledge, strategy planning and access to exclusive investment opportunities. Without specialist expertise, investors can struggle to navigate the complexities of property markets, financing structures, and wealth management strategies that are essential for maximising returns and minimising risk.
In the investment, finance, management and private office service providers 2025 index, Spear’s highlights the top advisers in the field – professionals with unparalleled access to prime investment deals and off-market opportunities, as well as those who provide innovative guidance on financing, structuring, and managing real estate projects.
Explore the other rankings within the 2025 Spear’s Property Indices:
- Best property brokers
- Best country specialists
- Best buying agents
- Best relocation and shipping specialists
- Best property lawyers
These advisers bring years of experience in helping clients optimise their holdings and ensuring that property investments align with broader financial goals.
An increasingly influential sector within this space is private office service providers. These firms, which are gaining prominence worldwide both as independent entities and as divisions of major real estate companies, offer a comprehensive approach to wealth and property management.
By serving as a one-stop shop for HNWs looking to acquire, develop, or refine their real estate portfolios, they streamline the investment process and provide a tailored, strategic service that integrates property with a client’s wider financial landscape.
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- Methodology
- Best property investment, finance, management and private office service providers: Some of the top names to know
- Best property investment, finance, management and private office service providers: the complete list
- Contact us
Methodology
Each year, the Spear’s Research Unit reassesses and refreshes its rankings of the leading providers in each sector by gathering data from and about the advisers and firms themselves, assessing submission forms, collating nominations, carrying out peer reviews, reviewing data from third-party sources, gathering references and recommendations, canvassing experts and conducting hundreds of interviews.
Advisers are evaluated using a proprietary scoring system that assigns different weightings to certain attributes. These scores feed directly into each new set of rankings in the Spear’s Indices. Each of these indices are published first online (according to the research calendar) and then in print. Print publication takes the form of the annual Spear’s 500 directory, which includes the top advisers in every index.
[See also: A guide to The Spear’s 500: Everything you need to know]
Each featured adviser is profiled on spears500.com. The site allows users to search the Spear’s database of more than 4,000 entities to find one (or more) to meet their specific requirements by filtering for specific attributes such as an adviser’s location, their specialist expertise and information about their client base.
Best property investment, finance, management and private office service providers: some names to know
Joanna Cocking
- Focus: £4 million-plus properties
- Position: Head of private office, Hamptons
- Ranking: Top Recommended
Joanna Cocking is head of private office and also leads the prime country team at Hamptons, directing regional specialists who are spread across the south and south east of England.
Cocking specialises in country estates, helping Hamptons’ UHNW client base to sell or secure their dream homes. As opposed to prime property in London, which moves quickly, Cocking says the situation in the countryside is markedly different and moving at a more relaxed pace.
Read Joanna Cocking’s full profile on Spears500.com
Richard Rogerson
- Focus: Complex transactions
- Position: Founder and CEO, RFR
- Ranking: Top Flight
RFR CEO Richard Rogerson has built a solid reputation for advising a small number of significant families and family offices on how to navigate complex and strategically important issues affecting their residential properties. He tells Spear’s that families often view him as a ‘quasi in-house expert trusted to protect their interests and build an effective best-in-class team of professionals around them’.
Rogerson runs RFR alongside his wife, Sophie. Both former Macfarlanes lawyers, the couple are former winners of the Spear’s Property Adviser of the Year Award, noted for their ability to marry personable service with absolute professionalism and impressive polish.
Read Richard Rogerson’s full profile on Spears500.com
Gulnara Long
- Focus: Sustainable property portfolio growth
- Position: Founder and managing director, Longview Advisors
- Ranking: Top Flight
Longview Advisors founder Gulnara Long, who has moved from Top Recommended to Top Flight in 2025, has developed a ‘modern advisory service’ to help international UHNWs make sense of the UK property landscape.
Receptive to the diversity of client needs, Long’s broad outlook allows her to deliver property solutions that dovetail with ‘family ambitions and financial goals’ – whether they be related to property management or UK investments. ‘It’s always great to do something that you know your clients could not have done without you,’ she tells Spear’s.
Read Gulnara Long’s full profile on Spears500.com
Best property investment, finance, management and private office service providers: the complete list
Contact us
- To apply for inclusion in The Spear’s 500, complete our submission form.
- For further information about rankings, please email research@spearswms.com; we aim to respond to all queries within two working days.
- For commercial enquiries and questions relating to enhanced profiles, please contact Commercial Director Shady Elkholy: shady.elkholy@spearswms.com
- To keep up to date with the Spear’s 500, subscribe to our magazine, newsletter and follow Spear’s on Linkedin and Instagram.
- If you have missed calendar deadlines for our research cycles in 2025, you can still register your interest for updates about upcoming research and rankings.
- Click here to order a print copy of The Spear’s 500.
