ABOUT US

NICE GROUP CORPORATE FACTFILE

MARKET POSITION

Nice Group has hit upon a gap in the market for high quality, branded rental accommodation for young professionals. Historically the private rental sector in the UK has been something of a cottage industry, operating on small scales and accounting for just 10% of UK houses, which is lowest percentage in Europe (by comparison it is 60% in Germany). The reasons for this include the lack of professional landlords, the lack of a structure for large scale institutional investment and the lack of any strong brand names. And while many of professional landlords are good and honest, there is also a lingering perception of the faceless, money-grabbing private landlord who doesn't come and fix broken appliances or the dripping tap.

As there are no big organisations or brands, institutional investors find it very difficult to invest in the residential sector which has so far prevented the sector from expanding significantly. Getting in to commercial property is easy, but getting in to the residential sector is fiddly – it would mean hundreds of transactions with individual owners, tenants, authorities, regulators and no way to deal in large volumes. The business model created by Nice Group has created an innovative mechanism for both private and institutional investors to invest in the private residential rental sector. And this model, which began on a small scale, has flourished so that it is now a viable of option for major international investment funds.

CORPORATE OVERVIEW

Nice Group started out as a group of friends buying individual houses in South East London and offering rooms to rent out as shared houses. They realised they had hit upon an innovative offering and as they developed their business model, the group grew and diversified to offer associated property services. Since its inception, it has grown to a size and scope even better than the ambitious expectations its founding partners, with the number of properties it owns currently standing at around 250, with a value of £185 million. The group aims to buy in the region of £300m to £500m worth of properties in 2008.

Now Nice Group provides investors with a fully integrated property asset management platform and management expertise throughout the full range of services including property acquisitions, planning, design and construction, lettings and property management. By having the whole delivery team in house with a structured hands on approach, they mitigate risk and ensure robust returns.

They have also created a fresh and approachable brand with a strong identity which inspires consumer and investor confidence. This strong brand attracts tenants, which results in high occupancy rates, along with the premium rents, yields higher returns for the investor".

STARTING OUT

The idea for Nice Group came from two friends who got together, identified a good idea and were willing to take some risks. Nice Group, formerly named ‘Breeze Management’ was established in March 2003 by Martin Skinner and Guy Bullerwell, principally as a vehicle to manage their personal property portfolios. Inspired by the best-selling book ‘Rich Dad, Poor Dad’, both Guy and Martin started to buy properties and rent out the rooms to cover the mortgages.

By the time they had a few houses between them, mostly around Docklands areas of South East London, they spotted the enormous potential of what they were doing. The premise was to buy large family homes, redesign them to maximise the number of bedrooms, fit them out to a high standard and then rent out individual rooms to young professionals. They had started upon a business model which generated significantly higher yields in the rental market than renting out an apartment as a whole. Soon their first properties were full of tenants, friends and family started to invest in their own properties and the business started to grow. This entrepreneurial spirit remains at the heart of the company.

THE DEVELOPMENT OF ‘NICE’

Nice Group is the parent brand for a range of different services and products. Each individual company brand in this diverse group forms a link in the cycle, meaning the group can offer the complete investment, development, maintenance and property management service.

In early 2004, a website called Nice Room (www.niceroom.co.uk) was established as a marketing device to best describe what was on offer: “a nice room”. Nice Room is now going from strength to strength providing first class rental rooms in modern well equipped house shares and flat shares. With over 1000 rooms currently managed, Nice Room is growing quickly by around 100 new rooms a month.

After this further brand names were introduced: Nice Interior was used to describe the fit-out team, Nice Builder was used to describe the projects team and Nice Mortgage was set up to broker mortgage arrangements for the properties.

RAPID GROWTH AND ATTRACTING INVESTMENT

In 2006, the two founding partners found that the continued and growing demand for their services could not be met by the speed in which private clients can purchase properties and arrange finance. As a result, they decided to find an institution that could invest in residential property on a bigger scale. To do this they established Nice Capital and signed a deal with Resolution Property, which has so far made available over £30 million of equity through a residential fund. Nice Investment was also set up to act as the acquisitions team which finds and buys the properties on behalf of the funds.

FACTS AND FIGURES

Portfolio:

Nice Group currently manages around 250 properties and operates over 1000 rooms
The target for 2008 is to add 30 new properties to the portfolio each month
Occupancy rate for Nice Room is over 95%
Most of the Nice Room properties have six bedrooms
Around 80% of the portfolio (200 properties) is owned by the funds and the remainder by private investors (50 properties)
Average tenant stay is 10 - 12 months

Investment:

The value of the groups property portfolio is currently £185 million
Nice Group has over £50 million of property already let and under management

Company:

The Nice Group currently employs around 100 staff, not including the teams of builders and this number is growing rapidly.

Nice Group is headquartered in a warehouse they converted in South East, which provides 20,000 sq ft of open plan office space. The company’s ethos is all about looking after its team, from providing contributions to a staff fund each time a new property is launched to helping staff members build up their own personal property portfolios.

Future plans:

In London, Nice Group is broadening the range of locations of its properties in 2008, expanding in the South, in the Brixton / Clapham area, the South West, in Balham and Wandsworth, the West, in the Shepherd’s Bush area, the North West, in Queens Park, Kensal Green, Kensal Rise and Ladbrook Grove, and in the North in the Camden / Islington area as well as plans for the area.

There are already Nice Group operations in Germany and Nice Group will also begin operations in the US in 2008, launching its Nice Room and Nice Pad concepts in New York in the early New Year, as well as plans to take the model to Australia.