‘Savills’ USP is the breadth of services we offer,’ says Forrester, who joined in 2012 from Cluttons, where he was head of residential management and consultancy for many years.
The team at Savills deals with everything from day-to-day operational management and leasehold reform to providing asset management advice. ‘Our team sits as a conduit for all the services the firm can provide for a client,’ he says. ‘We have the clients’ hat on in the firm.’
Clients range from charities and financial institutions to landed estates and UHNWs, and Savills works with them to establish, maintain and enhance the capital and rental value of property assets and to improve returns through expert portfolio management. ‘A family estate might make decisions based on personal preference rather than a 100 per cent commercial reason and you have to go with that,’ he says, ‘but generally speaking people want to get the best value out of what they have, and that’s what we’re tasked to do.’
Particularly memorable projects for Forrester include the refurbishment of a house which, postwar, had been carved up into bedsits. ‘We refurbished it into a single family house and restored the ornate ceilings and original architectural features that hadn’t been lost,’ he says. ‘The bedsits were re-provided as modern purpose-built accommodation funded from value released from the development.’