How one family continues to disrupt the property marketplace

When Naveen Ahmed first started working in the Leeds property sector more than 25 years ago, his aim was to disrupt the marketplace.

Now that’s something his sons, Shaan and Haaris want to continue to do. The family spoke at TheBusinessDesk.com’s property lunch on Thursday, sponsored by Freeths. Naveen said his career was about defining moments and ensuring he always reassessed.

Naveen is managing director of Parklane Group, which includes Parklane Properties and runs aparthotel chain Roomzzz, alongside IconInc, a luxurious student accommodation provider.

At the very start of his career he has more than a 100 job rejections. Naveen said: “That defined me as a person, I knew I wanted to work for myself and not anyone else. I wanted to go as high as I could go as a person.

“I became a plumber, I had my own team working for me. I was entrepreneurial.”

Part of this entrepreneurial flair saw him set up a “unique and different” pizza shop, well known as Big Mamas.

“It was the days before the net, I heard to learn everything from books,” he reflected.

But after this he started to move into the property sector, where his father and brother already worked. He said: “We disrupted the marketplace. It was pretty ancient then.

“Student accommodation 21 years ago was awful. We brought in accompanied viewings and started to raise standards.

“The banks were very supportive in those day. We went out there, buying back to back houses. We had a team of people refurbishing.

“At any given time, we had 20 houses on the go. The banks were supportive.  It was a good time for us.”

From there, Parklane grew rapidly, he said.

“Then a building came up,  and we were interested in that building. A company was going to do student complex, they set the blueprint for us – they couldn’t complete and so we bought a bit of it. We saw purpose built student accommodation coming into the marketplace but never thought we do it ourselves.”

It was then that the firm set up first its purpose built accommodation, described as a defining moment when they suddenly had 100 plus apartments. Then came further growth plans.

Naveen added that he spotted a gap in the market between hotels and apartments. “I was thinking of the sector and growing out of Leeds. I fancied starting up serviced accommodation and Roomzzz was built there in 2006. We came up with a brand and marketed it from there.

“These are smaller apartments but be able to rent out. It was extremely successful. We were full very quickly. It was the hospitality angle we didn’t have before.

“The recession came. Again, you have to start and think again.”

After thinking long and hard about the changing the marketplace and the fact that the student accommodation sector was becoming saturated, IconInc was born.

This is higher quality student accommodation with more of a hotel feel and the company is about to open its third one, in Liverpool. Roomzzz have seven openings planned for the next 18 months.  

Naveen said: “You have to have the vision and reassess your goals. For us, we look to grow IconInc nationally and into Europe. We want to grow Roomzzz, it now has its own momentum.

“We missed out on Vienna and Copenhagen recently but I am confident we will acquire further locations in Europe soon.”

Brothers Shaan and Haaris set up crowdfunding property firm last year. Shaan said: “Both Haaris and I think the property right now is ripe for change. Property has become inaccessible to the majority.”

He said that as a millennials themselves, they found that all property was completely inaccesbile to buy an among the “generation rent.”

Shaan said: “At UOWN, we asked ourselves one question: was it possible to make accessing property cheap?”

They wanted to find a solution to make investment accessible to anyone. Haaris said this led to them combining software development and hardware to start UOWN.

He said: “You can log on to website and in 1 minute and 30 seconds you can sign up to buy a chunk of a house at the moment in Leeds from the second you have bought the chuck, you are earning rent. We count it up by the second and at the end of the month we pay you the returns.

“It’s a very low cost way of doing it, which means that we can pass on the returns to investors.”

He added that it was not just about clever software but also the hardware of having the backing of their dad Naveen and the Parklane Properties business.

“This means that anybody can be investing in property like a pro,” added Haaris.

The brothers have seen £400,000 invested since launch and they are ambitious to keep growing.

Their first property was bought for £180,000 and it is now owned by 92 different people aged 18-72 each owning between £20 and £20,000.

Haaris said the next stage was to allow investors the opportunity to access property development – so the “everyday person” could put money into new developments and schemes. 

However, the brothers are having to “educate” people because they are unsure about crowdfunding platform. 

Reflecting on Leeds being the “heart” of the business, Naveen said: “Leeds is a wonderful city. This is where our brands have developed. It’s our test tube, our lab. We experiment and get it right.

“We will have a special scheme in the new year and two new brands are being developed at the moment.”

The rental property market is growing, he said, but needs to adapt to the changing aspirations of the consumer.

Naveen added: “It is going to be the European, Australian and the US model where people will rent rather than buy –  unless the industry gets de-regulated by the banks they won’t be able to raise the deposits.

“When you look back to the 19th century, people were living close to the factories. I think that will come back here – communities back in city centres. This will see workspaces underneath and that will be the community that will be created.”

All three said that family was incredibly close to them and they all supported one another through the ventures and shifts in the market.

“Business is about family – it’s extremely important to us. If we do things together, we can be a lot stronger,” said Naveen.