Investment Surveyor - Katie Taylor

Property seems to be the repository for really nice people and checked shirts, as we came across both a lot during filming!

Unlike many of the industries we covered property seems to have retained a civility of lifestyle where you don’t have to kiss goodbye to your life in order to do well and make a tidy living. It’s bonus orientated which always brings with it the prospect of huge rewards and jobs tend to come with a full suite of perks including company cars and all of the standard healthcare provisions.

It’s a job that often gets you out and about so you’re not always stuck behind a desk and it’s increasingly international, so plenty of travelling if you want it. One big plus is that you’re not tied to London in the same way you would be in an industry such as Investment Banking. So whilst many applicants will want to come to the capital to start their careers, many industry stars are based in the regions.

You’ll want to really love property, land and buildings though as some of the work can be pretty mundane and you’re unlikely to get quite the same buzz, excitement and glamour as a few of the other industries we covered.

Salaries are good in property and as mentioned previously if you get a bonus you’ll be able to challenge the lawyers and bankers. New starters in London can expect a salary in the region of 30K (25K out of London), after about 8 years you’ll be knocking on 100K in London (75K out of London).

Who are you and what do you do?

My name is Katie Taylor and I work for Savills and I am an investment surveyor.

What is Property?

The property industry is vast, it can cover commercial property, residential, it has many different aspects to it.  Property is about buildings, it is about land, it is about valuing buildings, managing buildings, leasing them, selling them.  In my mind property is about maximising the potential of either a site or an actual building.

What attracted you to this career?

I was attracted to property mainly because it is varied, there are so many different areas you can go into. I think a lot of people never realise quite how far the property industry extends and so it is a really varied career. I was interested as a result of, I did some really quite bland A levels just in terms of economics, quite a general one, geography and French, having done that I then explored lots of different areas in terms of degree courses.  Property was something which interested me just in general life. I was always interested in land, buildings and what people were doing on development sites so I knew I was interested in property itself.  I wasn’t sure how I would take my A Level choices into that industry so started to talk to different local business and local chartered surveyors to find out a bit about their role and from that I was led into the degree at Reading University, which is land management.  Really from that it encouraged me, I quite wanted to do a vocational degree, which was something that led me directly into a career path.  There wasn’t an academic subject specifically that I wanted to go to university just to study, I wanted to do something that was very vocational.

What does your job involve?

My job is quite varied, not only is the property industry quite varied as a whole, but day to day jobs are quite varied, every day is different.  So I am an Investment Agent so I am buying and selling, commercial properties, I specialise in retail, big box retail, so retail parks we look at shopping centres and some of the more out of town locations so my day could be out on site, visiting sites, meeting developers on site, it could be meeting with other agents to discuss information in the market, any possible deals  and things that might be going on and then also meeting regularly with clients to discuss their requirements looking at existing holdings in their portfolios, so it is extremely varied.

I am out of the office a lot and that can be in other offices for meetings or it can be actually out on location, or driving around the county looking at different sites and how individual  properties sit within commercial zones and how the property industry works in particular areas.

Interviewer: So on a typical day, does that mean you are out travelling quite a lot or are you at a desk?

Within the property industry you can be either, there are so many different parts to the property industry, happening to be an Investment Agent means that I need to get out on the roads to see the sites that I will then be advising on.  It is an attraction to the job for people who don’t necessarily want to be desk bound, so there is always an opportunity.  The best way to learn about a property is to see it.

Why an Investment agent?

Actually I came to investment very slowly.  A lot of people when they think about the property industry, especially when you are aware of different aspects of the industry, investment is a thing that attracts a lot of people. I didn't go straight into investment, at Savills; we have a graduate training programme, which allows graduates to rotate through all different parts of the business.  We are very keen for each surveyor to have at the end of their professional training to have experienced every part of the industry, so you work within the valuation team, the landlord and tenant team, you work on professional teams and agency teams. I worked in all those teams specialising in retail and the skill set that I gleaned at the end of that actually lent itself towards investment.  I had worked in valuing retail and I had worked in the landlord and tenants side in terms of looking how the leases operate.  Then I worked in the agency team, which is where you actually lease out the units and the individual properties.  That naturally led into investment where you use all those skills together in providing a client with advice. So I came into it very gradually in the two-year training programme but it was a natural evolution for me to end up working in that team.

What are the different types of surveyor?

A valuation surveyor will predominantly look at the value of buildings and they have a completely different day to day routine to that of an investment agent.  A landlord and tenant surveyor will look at the lease of the building and they will be looking at the relationship between the landlord and the tenant and the contract that they have to occupy that building.  They will be involved in the legal side of it on a day to day basis and looking at how the rent is reviewed according to the terms of the contract and how you renew a lease and how you continue occupancy within the contract that has been previously agreed.  A management surveyor however, will look at day to day how the building is run, are the tenants happy in terms of their occupational requirements?  They look at service charges, they look at parking, they look at landscaping, lots of different areas within the whole management and environment of the building.  An investment surveyor, however, will be involved in the buying and selling the property so they have a completely different day to day routine and a different part of the process when you are looking at the property industry.

What are the speicialisms within your industry?

Most graduate programmes when you start in the industry will give you an opportunity to work in different teams and you could find yourself, depending on your degree, because there is an opportunity when you are studying to specialise even at that stage into particular areas that you want to go into.  You could find yourself in the planning department, on a rotation you could be put through a valuation team, a landlord and tenant team, an investment team, an agency team, capital allowances, rating, management.  Many different areas that you can rotate through that all have different areas of specialisms.

Describe the process of your work?

It is probably easier to look at the sale of the property.  Quite often we will be asked, Savills are property advisors, and we will come in and a client will say, we are interested in selling a property.  Savills can come in on the investment side and look at that property and see how it sits within their portfolio and look at the market in terms of how much demand there is for those types of properties, and we can advise what you would expect to achieve if you sold it in the market today, how popular it would be with investors, how many people want to buy it and when would be the best time to bring it to the market.  So we will speak at length with a client to advise on timing, pricing and the method of sale, and we will advise on the many different methods of sale, but it might be put into an auction, it might be that it was sold off market, or it might be sold with the use of a brochure and advertised within the market place, so we provide all that advice.  That advice is used from our own market knowledge and sitting down with the client and working on the numbers and the process as a whole.  Once we have made the decision that the property is going to be sold, we would have already done this but we will revisit the site again and then the sales process commences. We will look at the buildings themselves, they will be photographed, they will be measured, each individual unit will be measured, and we start to put together an information pack and sales particulars for the property.  I really enjoy this part of the job because you have an opportunity to be quite creative, if you are working on this particular area in an investment agency you work very closely to the marketing teams who put together brochures and information details that are going to be sent out to the market.  So we can work together in terms of the design of the brochure, the layout, the number of pages, glossy or non-glossy, it gives us an opportunity to be a little creative on the marketing side.  We will work with them on that. Then your role as an agent really comes into play you will be on the phone talking to other agents telling them about the property, highlighting all the advantages of that and making sure that they have enough information that they can present it to one of their clients who hopefully have a requirement to buy.  Investment agency is like a giant game of snap you are just trying to match two things together and if you are on the sales side you are trying to find an agent that has something and a client that wants to buy exactly the same thing.  That is when there is a lot of communication between agent and client and then we start to bring it to a close.  We will be on the phone telling and advising everybody that it has been out in the market for some time. We may have shown people around the property on property inspections.  We have met with agents individually to talk them through the details of the property and then we just move it forward and bring it to a close.  We normally have what we call a best bids process and we just ask everybody to put forward their best bid in an attempt to buy it.  Once we get into that stage and there has been lots of negotiation backwards and forwards we then involve the lawyers and again this is another interesting area of the process, if you are more inclined to the legal side of the process, interested in the detail.  It is what we call due diligence, it just mean we start to really look into the process of bringing the two contracts to a close and we work quite closely with legal teams that specialise in that and that would be the sale of a property and hopefully both parties would be happy and there would be a celebration drink at the end of it.

What are the best bits about your job?

I think why I was always interested in property from a younger age is that I was interested in how you look at land and how you maximise the potential of a building or of a site.  What I love about my job is you can look at sites and you can change them, you can change the use of it and for example I work in retail and you can change the shopping experience of some particular shopping area or retail park. You see an immediate result from it and that is what I like about it and the fact that property is unique, every single property is different, and every single project you do is different. There is very little repetition involved and you are constantly working with other people, I love the sociability of it, working with other agents, working with new clients all of the time, no day is the same, every day is completely different.

What are the worst bits about your job?

I think it is difficult to identify a worst bit given that the property industry is so varied, if there is a side of it that you are not particularly comfortable, it may be that in your personal life you are quite a sociable person but you don't like that are in the workplace you can move into a different area of the industry.  There are so many different types of surveyors, they have different kinds of skill sets.  We have valuation surveyors, landlord and tenant surveyors, building surveyors, planners.  So they all have different skill sets that are needed and if you do find yourself in a particular part of the industry that you don't find that interesting or stretches you in a way that you are not comfortable with, there is always an opportunity to move into another area, so it is difficult to find something that you really dislike.

What has been your greatest achievement?

I am quite excited at the moment because I have recently transferred to our Paris office, it is something I have wanted to do for some time, I have always wanted to work with European property.  I was very keen when I started that I just learnt my trade as it were, I got to grip with properties and was very comfortable with the market here.  We are a very sophisticated and advanced market here in the UK.  It is a market that is very transparent and a lot of the information can be accessed so there is a real opportunity to become professionally qualified and learn your market.  Having built up that skill set, I am hopefully taking that across now working in Paris and working in European property so it was something I have been building up for some time and I have just embarked upon it so I don't know if it is my greatest achievement just yet because I haven't finished but it is something I have worked towards for a while.

Any regrets?

I don't think I would actually, I have been through the process in the very standard format, I did geography and economics at A level and then I joined Reading University to do land management.  I joined Savills graduate training programme for two years and then I stayed within the industry.   So it is the standard form of entering the industry but I am very pleased that I have done that, I have a skill set that is incredibly useful for me in going forward and working with all the different parts of the property industry.  I have got a good solid foundation in different markets which is really useful going forward.  There are different ways you can enter in the industry, I don't think any are preferable to others, it just depends what suits you as a person and I wanted to have a good grounding on it before taking on things like European markets and going in to different areas. There are lots of ways you can do it but I am quite pleased with the way that I chose.

What is the pay like and are there any perks?

I have only worked at Savills so I am not always just aware of what we are doing.  I have worked in graduate recruitment for a short time, so I have been able to benchmark where Savills sits within other property firms.  The thing I love about property and the way we run things at Savills is that we have a basic salary and the we have a discretionary bonus system and what that actually allows is a very entrepreneurial feel, so are we compared with other investment industries, well yes there is always the potential to be comparable and go a lot further.  At Savills it is very much an entrepreneurial business, you are motivated to work as hard as you can because you will see the rewards in your own bonus so there is no limit, if you like, as to how far you can go with that.  As long as you work within an organisation that allows different barriers to be broken in terms of how you are promoted, your bonus shouldn't be held down in any way.  There is lots of scope to earn big bonuses and compete with the investment banking world.

How long is a working day and do you have to work out of hours?

Again it depends in what part if the industry you work in, I work in investment agency and that is very much driven by what work we have got at that time. I was attracted to this particular part of the business because it is not nine to five, we don't work incredibly long hours all of the time, but if there is a particular project that we are working on and it requires that we work long hours then we work them but then at the same time a lot of our work is quite sociable so there are a lot of networking events that we go to during the evening and although they are work, they are quite fun social occasions, so you don't really see it as work, it is driven by what you are doing at that time.  We always tend to pull together as a team and when you are working long hours it is actually quite fun and then there are quieter times, always quieter times of the yeas as well so it makes up for that but it is definitely not nine to five.

Is there much in the way of travel?

It depends on the area of business you have chosen, if you are working on European or international team, even if you are based in the UK, there will be huge scope for travel all over the world.  Again investment agency lends itself to that more than anything. There are valuation teams that specialise in European operations and they travel a lot it just depends on the client base that you have within the team. But at Savills we have the opportunity to find clients that have European requirements and European operations and you work with them, then you will follow the client into those destinations so there is huge scope for travel.

Do you have to be based anywhere in particular?

You can work in the regions, I think it depends on how your organisation as to how well they are represented in those regions.  Savills has a very strong regional network we work closely with the local offices all of the time and regional offices are growing all of the time and technology has improved that as well and the ability to travel more quickly between destinations has helped so yes we have very strong markets in Manchester and Birmingham and they are very heavily populated in those offices.

What is the working environment like?

Property is a male dominated industry even today but increasingly less so even in the time I have been working in the industry which is about eight years, there are more and more girls coming into it.  It is a very young industry, it is a fun industry.  There are a lot of motivated entrepreneurial individuals that take part in it; property is different and the people that work in it are different. it attracts lots of different types of people and I think that is what makes it sociable and enjoyable to work in.  It depends also on the organisation you are in and the office environment and floor plan, we work in an open plan office, has a bit of a buzz about it, it is exciting, it is male dominated but there are more girls coming into it.  So I would like to say that it was a young mixed group of lots of motivated ambitious people.

Interviewer: And is it formal, what is the dress code like?

It is quite formal, a number of companies that have a kind of American influence have explored the dress down Friday but business attire is expected, it is a professional environment we have all trained as professionals and there are occasions for dress down, whether it be a hospitality event or if your particular company does have a dress down Friday then there is scope there but normally it is business attire.

How did you get into your job?

I started off with my A levels, explored different property based courses at university they were very vocational courses the are run by individuals that work closely with property individuals in the industry itself, so they are tailored ready for a young graduate coming in to this environment. I went to Reading University did a land management course, I did it as an undergraduate, there is a possibility to do a masters course there and a lot of people do do that, having done a geography or economics degree or something like that.  There are city based university courses as well, there are courses in Aberdeen, Edinburgh, you can do it all over the country.  During the summer holidays of those courses it is always recommended that you do work experience and that is what I did, I worked at Savills during my summer holidays.  It helps in terms of re-firming your interest in the industry but start to build up contacts and companies and find out what different companies there are available and what suits you individually. So I did the three-year course at Reading, I built up my work experience at that time and then joined the Savills graduate training programme.  They have an assessment centre that you attend, you send your CV in; the CV is read by a number of individuals in the company and then you are shortlisted to take part in an assessment centre.  Each company will do it differently although more and more are running assessment centres as standard practice now.  During an assessment centre you are expected to work within a team environment normally there will be group exercise, make a presentation, maybe do a maths test depending on the firm some sort of personality questionnaire and then some written exercises.  They are not generally meant to be extremely difficult they are just to check for people's relevant skill sets for the areas they want to go into.  Having completed that Savills run a second round interview where you are called in in front of a panel where you are given a one to one type style interview it may be that you are given questions about the property industry, unlikely to be given a technical interview, because you are still training at that stage, but they just want to find out about you as a person, whether you would fit in culturally to the environment and what your ambitions and aspirations are going forward.  I was successful in completing that part so joined Savills.

Are the courses and exams very specialised?

There are different types of APC that you can sit, there are those that are a GP (General Practice) type course whereby you will be given an overview in lots of different areas of the business and at the end of that it is really a role that you can take part in any part of the industry having studied it on a general practice basis. There are however, opportunities to focus in on the planning and developing side of the business and that will have a different set of competencies and a different training programme.  When you are studying for your GP APC you will rotate through different teams and different standards are expected for example you are expected to reach what we call level three in valuation and you are given a whole range of different areas that you can specialise in.  If you were doing planning and development you would focus in on different areas of specialisms.

What are the key skills required for your job?

I think being sociable is very important within the industry, you don't necessarily need it for your day to day job but building up good networks and contacts within the industry is very important. Property is about trading information and the better contacts you have and the more sociable you are really helps.

What's your top tip for breaking into your industry?

A lot of people who have done the university courses and the academic qualifications are quite similar so what really helps us in identifying somebody that is going to be really motivated by property and know they are really interested in it is work experience, relevant work experience in the industry that shows a commitment at an early stage, even before a university course or during the university course, that shows that you have explored the industry, you have looked at different teams you have looked at different companies and you have committed to that at an early stage.  We, as an industry, are going to be investing in your future and training you and it is nice to have a little bit of comfort that that person really has understood the industry that they are embarking upon.

What's the career progress and how quickly can you move up the career ladder?

It depends on which company you are in but the standard practice is having left university to take part in your assessment of professional competence it is a two year programme it is run by the RICS and at the end of that, if successful, you will be a chartered surveyor.  Having done that you are placed in whatever team you have chosen to work in and the career path will vary depending on the company and the structure that your company has.  Within Savills we have different levels, we have associate, associate director and director.  You can progress as quickly as you like there are some standard time frames normally after one or two years after being qualified and working within a team, you should expect to hit the role of associate and from then on in it really is up to you as an individual, there are no limits and there are no time zones as to restrictions of your career progression.  Savills have an annual appraisal and there is an opportunity for promotion at every stage so it is up to you as an individual really as to how quickly you want to progress.

What are the entry requirements?

Most of the courses that are run provide exemptions when coming into a graduate training programme and therefore starting the Assessment of Professional Competence, its not always necessary, it is easier from a training perspective because then we know everybody is starting from the same position, there are other ways of doing it.  It can make like a little difficult when you are actually carrying out your  Assessment of Professional Competence if you need to sit additional exams at the same time as doing that but it is definitely possible.

Where do you see the industry going?

Instead of investing directly into property we now have the option of investing indirectly, a lot of people have been encouraged to sit what are called FSA exams, Financial Services Authority organised exam and that is an area that takes you beyond the chartered surveyor and looks at property in isolation but therefore looking at the market as a whole and looking at different opportunities and see how property sits within other asset classes.

Is there scope for movement during or after this career?

Having been a chartered surveyor there is always chances to move into other industries, I think it gives you a wide variety of knowledge of all different types of business and most agents start off in the agency world and there is a natural progression to move into fund management at a later date.  Some people do it straight from university but most people start their careers in an agency capacity and then move on to fund management.

What are the industry resources that someone interested in joining must know about?

One of the key magazines that we all refer to is the Estates Gazette that is something that university courses have within their resources centres, it gives you a really good snapshot of what is going on in the property industry at that particular time, it has some fun bits in there about what different organisations are doing but it really gives you a summary of latest deals, news updates and information about different career prospects in terms of jobs but also university courses and things like that.

If you weren't in this career, what would you be doing?

I actually don’t know, I think I always wanted to do property from an early point. There was a stage where I was interested in law but having visited Reading University and looked at the breakdown of their university course a significant part of that involved law and property and that therefore sort of fulfilled that need to look into the legal side of things for me.  It touched upon everything, the land management course, it touched on economic factors, a little bit of geography, construction, and then the legal side of the industry as well, so it opened up a whole new world in terms of where you could go but the natural progression having done the course was the property industry.