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"Quintessentially Estates doesn’t reveal what client it is working for - so people can buy or sell properties incognito"

Buying property overseas brings a special set of issues with it - foreign property laws, taxes and housing standards, not to mention cities that you may not know too well. But for those who have deep pockets help is at hand.

A growing number of companies are setting up shop to guide buyers looking overseas. Some function as clubs or networks; holding the hands of their clients and identifying potential places and properties to buy. Others operate more like developers, investing to get properties built and then parcelling off portions of the projects to their clients.

Interest is keen from high-rolling international investors who look set to benefit from the global downturn. At some stage, the declines in US and UK properties will be strong enough to make them good value once again. Bargain hunters are already asking property companies if now’s the time to start sniffing around. Other buyers looking overseas simply want to find second homes for their own use or long-term investments to help them diversify away from home

This is where firms like IP Global come in. Set up in September 2005 by Tim Murphy - although it was known as Intellectual Property before a name change - IP Global essentially acts as a developer in overseas markets, then sells portions of its projects on to its clients.

Most of its clients are very wealthy - captains of industry, entrepreneurs and company owners, who use the company to whittle down their options before buying. Many don’t have the time to travel to an overseas city and spend weeks vetting properties, so they want the legwork done for them.

“Where we make our money is in the initial negotiations with the developer,” spokeswoman Julia Wilde says. “We go and buy a large amount of units off plan and then sell them on to individual buyers. Because we are underwriting the deal, we take on a lot of the risk.”

By buying in bulk, the company tries to secure a sweet deal for itself and its clients on its properties. It charges clients a transaction fee of HK$10,000 to HK$15,000, and the client also pays local stamp duties and other costs. But otherwise it’s a normal purchase - the company doesn’t charge a percentage of the sale.

IP Global currently has projects on the go in markets as far-flung and varied as Japan, Abu Dhabi, Malaysia, Vietnam and Panama, having just finished deals in Brazil and Turkey.

The company has so far sold around 2,000 units worth some US$250 million to its client base of around 1,000 people, mostly in Hong Kong, Singapore and the United Kingdom.

Murphy, who started the company as an expansion of his own international property portfolio, typically invests personally in IP Global’s deals as well. He says he’s been asked to invest on behalf of investment bankers seeking to put their bonuses to use - though he might be seeing a lot fewer of those in the near future - and other investors with plenty of spare cash and not enough time to deploy it. Other clients simply want to invest overseas to diversify.

Most of the properties are pure investment plays - the owners never intend to use them. For instance, the company has invested in Hung Vuong Plaza in Ho Chi Minh City, a two-tower residential apartment project. It is backing its first commercial project with the Southgate office development in Kuala Lumpur.

In August, IP Global set up a sister company, Complete Ltd that works on letting and managing the properties that IP Global clients have bought.

Investing overseas can be just as risky as buying property at home, of course. Vietnam has had something of an economic crisis so far this year, with inflation hitting 28 percent and property prices correcting sharply.

IP Global notes, however, that prices at the Aquaba project it backed in Phan Thiet had risen 51 percent in the two years since it invested, so the correction comes after strong gains. It is advising clients to sit it out and think about their holdings for the long-term.

“Prices shot up very, very quickly, and it has had a correction,” Wilde says. “Some [investors] have been given the opportunity to pull out, but most of them are sticking it out.”

At the top end of the scale, Quintessentially Estates set up in Hong Kong around six months ago, the company’s first office in Asia. It is an offshoot of Quintessentially, a London-based member’s club and concierge service founded in 2000 by Ben Elliot, a nephew of Prince Charles’s current wife, Camilla, and Aaron Simpson, a film producer.

The main business of Quintessentially is to get what its clients want, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, like a hotel concierge - helping them book holidays, make restaurant reservations and take care of household chores. But thanks to interest from its clients, who had started asking the company to find them second homes, or look after the upkeep of their properties, it spawned the real-estate offshoot.

Quintessentially Estates now functions independently of Quintessentially and provides a property research, sourcing and management service.

“Ideally we would sit down and meet clients, preferably in their own home, because immediately you get a better idea for their taste than you would just speaking to them,” says Lucy Russell, the London-based Managing Director of Quintessentially Estates.

The company finds out where the buyer lives, what hours they work - longer hours normally mean less travel time – and what kind of activities they are into. It works up a file within the buyer’s budget, identifying neighbourhoods and individual properties the buyer may like. It also brings in interior designers and architects if necessary.

“We might have a client here in Asia who is looking for a vineyard in Asia,” says Carl McIntosh, the Head of Quintessentially Estates in the Asia Pacific region. “Or a residence on an island resort in Australia, or a penthouse in New York.”

Typical budgets are US$5 million to US$10 million in the United States, £10 million in Britain, HK$150 million in Hong Kong and as high as €20 million to €30 million in the South of France.

Sometimes the company acts just as a fancy orientation tour - chauffer-driven, of course. The service is also popular with people who would rather remain under the radar, like celebrities or politicians. The company doesn’t reveal what client it is working for – so people can buy or sell properties incognito. Some sellers of high-profile properties simply don’t want them listed on brokerage websites and prefer to have a team sell them one-on-one.

"France is one of our biggest markets,” Russell says, noting that the company has a brokerage license there. “We get a lot of that in the South of France - people don’t list a lot of the key houses there on websites.”

Quintessentially has a brokerage license in some markets, and operates somewhere between a brokerage and a consulting company - a bit of a tricky point for regulators, perhaps. Mainly, though, clients use the company because it saves a lot of time.

Every now and then, a buyer will sign on the dotted line for a property in another part of the world that they haven’t even seen.

“There have been occasions where we have seen the properties and bought them for clients who have taken our word for it,” says Russell, who used to work for a London real-estate brokerage.

The company charges 2 percent of a property’s value for its search service, if a sale goes through. It will also maintain a property, arranging maid service or filling up the fridge before you arrive. That costs £30 per hour, or the local equivalent - HK$423 per hour in Hong Kong.

McIntosh says there is still a lot of interest in South East Asian properties from the United States and Europe, despite the credit crunch and property problems there. The richest of the rich are still buying, and Europeans in particular have been tempted by the relatively attractive exchange rates when looking at Hong Kong and Asia.

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