Society of Property Researchers Annual Dinner 2022
Royal Air Force Club, 128 Piccadilly, London W1

After a two-year hiatus due to Covid-19, the 35th SPR Annual Dinner returned.  The 2022 event took place at the Royal Air Force Club in London’s West End, the first time it had been held here. The venue serves men and women who hold, or have held, commissions in the RAF and the corridors display extensive works of aviation art and history and a collection of original Squadron Badges.

Following a buzzing welcome drinks in the Club’s Churchill Bar, 112 SPR members sat down for dinner at 10 tables in the Sovereigns’ Room, where a nice balance was struck between tables of individual members and company hosted tables with their invited guests. As it turned out, demand had been so high that some members had unfortunately been unable to secure places.

Outgoing committee chair Hamish Smith, welcomed everyone to the dinner, before thanking members for their support over the year as face-to-face events returned to the Society’s calendar, while also singling out previous chairs Tom Duncan and Lucy Greenwood for their success in keeping the Society running at a high level throughout the pandemic and introducing new meeting formats such as ‘Coffee and Conversation’ that allowed networking to continue online. He said that ‘the easy thing would have been to sit back and do nothing, but they did a fantastic job, ensuring that the Society continued to provide a platform for discussion and knowledge sharing.’  He also thanked Alex Dunn, Joanna Tano and Becci Williamson for their efforts in organising the Annual Dinner, and also Oxford Economics for once again generously sponsoring the event.

Incoming SPR chair Alex Dunn then took over, thanking the three previous chairs, who he said, ‘had left the Society in a stronger position than pre-Covid.’ The current challenging market conditions mean that property researchers’ insights are particularly valuable and the SPR will continue to run events to bring people together for engagement and sharing of ideas.  Alex encouraged members to tell the Committee what they like about the events held and what they would like to see in the future, including suggesting topics for the new format round table events that would soon be starting.

Following on from Alex, George Armitage of Oxford Economics introduced the charity benefitting from this year’s raffle: the Harry’s Hat Charity (https://harrys-hat.org/), which was founded by a real estate professional whose baby was found to have hydrocephalus, a brain condition that affects 1 in 777 children.  The charity supports children with hydrocephalus, their families and their carers.

Between tasty courses of roasted harissa cauliflower, coq au vin and crème brulée, two further announcements were made.  Firstly, Hamish Smith announced the winners of the SPR Research Prizes: the Under-30s award went to Daniel McKegney of Heitman for his paper titled ‘The Determinants of UK self-storage rents’, while the open category was won by Kevin Mofid of Savills for a paper on  ‘The Affordability of Warehouse Rents’.  Unfortunately, Kevin was unable to attend the dinner, but the award was picked up on his behalf by colleague Clare Bailey.  Later, the SPR Fellowship for 2022 was presented to Malcolm Frodsham in recognition of his innovative work in the field, formerly as head of real estate research at Legal & General and then at IPD, but more recently at his own company, RES.

At the end of the dinner came the much-anticipated raffle. The prizes, all of which had been generously donated by real estate firms, included a meal for two at The Shard, £500 Mr and Mrs voucher, hampers, activity days, book tokens, chocolates, a case of wine and various bottles! It was commendable that the winners, drawn out of the hat by Charles Burton of Oxford Economics, handed back their prizes if they had already won one. The raffle raised an impressive £1,250 with Simon Durkin of BlackRock securing an amazing charity match donation of an additional £1,100 taking the grand total to an incredible £2,350. The evening was rounded off with more drinks in the Churchill Bar before members’ carriages whisked them away into the night.

Tim Horsey

     .