Guess where Marc Wainer spent his last December holidays. At Canal Walk in Cape Town's Century City, SA's biggest retail centre - and he wasn't shopping.
The director of Madison (manager of Hyprop, Redefine, ApexHi and Prima) was there on behalf of Hyprop, 80% owner of Canal Walk. And with him every day was Eric Ellerine, a 20% partner in the centre they had bought a few months before. They studied the parking and irritated the shop assistants with their questions. One day Ellerine spent six hours in the food court watching the customers.
With that sort of hands-on management, it's no coincidence that the five best-performing property funds this year (see main story) are run by seasoned property men who made their money as property entrepreneurs first.
It was not always so. Until the late 1990s, institutions and fund managers dominated the listed property sector, with Allan Gray (manager of Grayprop), Corovest (Sycom, Arnold and Hyprop) and Marriott (Martprop and SA Retail) as their leading lights. These managers are no slouches. But, in the words of one investor: "They tend to manage their assets by following graphs and calling in consultants, rather than dealing with their properties hands-on."
The Wapnicks, father Alec and son Jeffrey, who manage Premium and Octodec , have made a fortune in Pretoria over decades by being deeply involved in every aspect of their properties. They are major investors in their own funds.
Mike Flax started in his early 20s, looking after syndicate investments for clients of estate agents Seeff, and buying properties himself. The syndicates struggled through the 1990s. When Flax brought his investors to the JSE through Spearhead, few experts expected him to achieve anything. But at 39 he has proved his mettle. His partner, Allan Groll (49), started in property in London at 24. Like the Wapnicks, these two are also major shareholders in their company.
Wainer (55) and his partner in Madison, Wolf Cesman (61), are among the most experienced property men in the business. Cesman joined Wainer after retiring as chairman of Liberty Properties, then SA's largest private property portfolio (it includes Sandton City).
With this experience he was able to introduce one simple change to Canal Walk. "Everything will be the same as before," he told staff at their first meeting. "Only, when you walk around from now on you will no longer carry a cheque book, but a deposit book."
David Kuper, Sam Hackner and Sam Leon of Investec Property Group, which manages Growthpoint, woke up Melrose Arch with another simple move: halving the rents.
