Savills, a global real estate advisory firm, has been expanding its footprint aggressively across the African continent through partnerships with regional real estate services companies. This is in line with their strategy to strengthen their business across the continent and provide clients with the best service in the region. Last year, Savills partnered with Swindon Property in South Africa, and also announced that it had opened an associate office in Lagos Nigeria. Today, we can confirm that Troloppe, a property service firm based in Nigeria, has now executed an associate partnership agreement with Swindon Property who is Savills’ commercial associate for the Sub-Saharan Africa region. See details below:

Troloppe will now trade as Swindon Savills in its brokerage and facility management business.

In this agreement, Troloppe will start trading as Swindon Savills in its brokerage and facility management business but will retain its research and advisory business, and trade as Troloppe for those services. In the note announcing their associate office in Nigeria, Geoff Krugger who is the Head of Client Advisory for Sub-Saharan Africa Managing at Swindon also mentioned that they are in talks to sign partnerships with potential associates in Angola, Ghana, and the Côte d’Ivoire. 

Pam Golding handles Savills’ residential services in South Africa, while Swindon is in charge of their commercial, retail, and Industrial.

To date, the global real estate services firm has a footprint in at least 11 other African countries including South Africa, Kenya, and Mauritius. Before the partnership with Swindon Property in 2020, Savills has been in partnership with Pam Golding for over a decade now, and the plan according to Savills is for Swindon, who has core competence within the commercial, retail and industrial sectors to represent Savills in providing real estate services within those segments of the market, while Pam Golding will handle Saviils’ residential real estate services across the South African market.

Why are partnerships more imperative at this time?

In 2019, we published a note that gave a pointer as to the best approach to building a Pan-African real estate business. What we found was that from 1960 – 2010, 59% of all pan-African expansion strategies were completed via new office establishment, this reduced to 32% in the decade ending 2019, as market players diversified their strategies and opted for franchise agreements, acquisitions, and partnership/affiliate agreements. Generally, advising clients on the best brokerage deals, giving tenants good representation, and providing value-adding portfolio management services, requires in-depth knowledge and a thorough understanding of local markets. This has become even more profound at this time, given the level of market change that has happened due to COVID-19. This means that pan-African or international businesses looking to operate at scale on the continent, will more than ever need to explore joint ventures or partner with local players who not only have a good understanding of the local market but have also successfully understood and positioned themselves to weather the impact of the pandemic on their business. As the market continues to evolve and recover from the pandemic, we expect to see more partnerships in the future. 

A few recent partnerships in Nigeria

• 2018 – CBRE agrees to enter a joint venture with Excellerate.
• 2019 – Broll Property Group and Cushman & Wakefield enter affiliate agreement.
• 2020 – Cluttons partnership with Alpha Mead Facilities & Management Services Limited. Although they eventually had to exit.
• 2021 – Swindon and Savills associate office with Troloppe.

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