JLL appoints leisure and hotel rating specialist Joe Slater as Director

Commercial real estate services consultancy JLL has expanded its London-based Ratings practice, in anticipation of growing demand for real estate valuations in the UK. Joe Slater, who arrives at the firm with more than a decade of experience delivering ratings in the hotel and leisure sector, becomes a Director with immediate effect.

As London looks to make the best of post-Brexit life, recent figures show that China is investing heavily in the London real estate market. In the first half of 2017 alone, £5 billion in Chinese capital was sunk into Britain’s capital city, as the low pound continues to make the present financial hub of Europe an attractive prospect, despite an uncertain future for links with the continent.

Despite this record investment in London, however, German real estate opportunities have since eclipsed the desirability of their UK counterparts for the first time – possibly in anticipation of a wider financial shift toward the mainland following Britain’s divorce from Brussels. As the real estate market of the UK continues to behave reflexively amid a continued spell of geo-political uncertainty for Britain and its businesses, risk ratings of property are likely to see high levels of demand – meaning consultancies involved in supplying the service are presently looking to bolster their operations to cope with a boost in their workload.

Lately, this has seen JLL appoint hotel and leisure rating specialist Joe Slater to its Rating team in London. Slater arrives at the firm following an eight year spell with the Valuation Office Agency (VOA), where he was most recently a Surveyor & Technical Advisor - Grade 7 (Band 2) Technical Specialist, becoming responsible for the hospitality sector nationally, with a particular specialism in the Central London luxury hotel market and national chain operated hotels.

All in all, Slater has worked as a specialist hotel and leisure rating surveyor for over ten years, including an almost 3 year spell with Gerald Eve, as a Graduate Surveyor/Surveyor, before joining the VOA in 2009. At Gerald Eve, he undertook assessment of professional competence (APC) training and successfully gained MRICS credential from the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors, with a particular specialism in the hospitality industry. Slater now boasts expertise in all areas of rating law and receipts and expenditure valuation.

At JLL, Slater becomes a Director, joining a 33 strong Rating team based in six locations across the UK where he will focus on developing the hotel rating business. This follows the recent expansion of the firm’s Rating teams both in the Midlands and Scotland.

JLL’s Rating business leverages the firm’s agency, lease advisory and research teams, in order to deliver property rating services for over 500 clients. Property ratings measure the risk-adjusted returns of real estate, relative to a completely risk-free asset. Mathematically, a property's investment rating is the return a risk-free asset would have to yield to be termed as good an investment as the property whose rating is being calculated.

Tim Beattie, lead director of JLL’s UK Rating team, commented, “Joe will be another fantastic addition to our national Rating team. He brings in-depth knowledge of leisure property valuation and as a specialist hotel valuer at the VOA he gained invaluable experience in this sector.”

Joe Slater added, “I am excited to be joining the JLL Rating team and playing a role in its continued growth in the leisure sectors.”