Interview with Patrick Peyrot, real estate consultant at Peyrot conseil & immobilier
Introduce yourself in a few words?
My name is Patrick Peyrot and I was born in Geneva. I am a self-employed person with a passion for real estate, sailing and the mountains.
I have been active in the real estate business for 20 years, and I remain as interested and determined as ever to take up the challenges of investors, sellers, lessors and companies looking for property.
My little inner voice often pushes me to boost and accelerate a little more than the others. It’s my dynamic in sport, my profession and life in general.
I would define myself as:
- curious, which allows me to quickly identify mandates or buyers with the right profile,
- rigorous, but able to show flexibility, my aim being to find the balance between all parties,
- dynamic, but also ready to take a step back. Sometimes you have to admit that a longer path will lead to a quicker achievement of the goal.
What are the key steps in your career path?
I have spent twenty years in one of the largest real estate companies in French-speaking Switzerland with the following successive stages: residential sales, real estate appraisals, commercial rentals, residential rentals and property sales.
My training at the Institut d’Etudes Immobilières (IEI) and my job have allowed me to combine theory with practice and to acquire the knowledge necessary for greater confidence in the field.
The expertise of a real estate portfolio of a major insurance company with more than 250 rental properties across Switzerland was the opportunity to create a benchmark for me.
The creation of a structure dedicated to investment and commercial real estate was a very formative experience from the point of view of the different markets dealt with and the diversity of the issues, respectively those of the tenant companies and those of the investors.
The creation of my own company, Peyrot conseil & immobilier, represents a new, more transversal experience that allows me to be active in all types of real estate transactions.
In your opinion, what are the main challenges facing brokers in the Swiss real estate market?
The regular introduction of new means of communication and distribution is a concern for today’s classic broker. No matter how competent and experienced they are, they face competition from specialists in distribution and mass communication.
Conversely, digital communication specialists often suffer from a lack of expertise in the real estate segment. Tomorrow’s broker will absolutely have to take an interest in new technologies and integrate them into his marketing processes.
What are the essential qualities to practice this trade?
Curiosity to know how to obtain information related to real estate in order to position oneself as accurately as possible.
Patience, because each transaction is a story and depending on the story, it can be long, very long.
Perseverance, because sometimes, after a long period of study, the selected investor gives up and, in this case, you have to start all over again.
Rigour is also essential for the proper organisation of the documentary base relating to the property and the correct implementation of the sale process.
What is your opinion on crowdfunding?
Investment property has a huge barrier to entry. You need to be able to immobilise significant equity, from 25% to 50% of the value of the property depending on the type of asset, not to mention the complex acquisition process. This severely limits access to small investors. Crowdfunding breaks down these barriers and makes this asset class attractive to a larger number of people, starting at CHF 25,000. It must be admitted that this is a small revolution that is taking us a giant leap into the world of sharing, of ordinary co-ownership.
How did you work with Foxstone?
It was during Foxstone’s first steps that I met Dan Amar, CEO and founder of Foxstone, who was interested in a building I was selling in Geneva. This first transaction was a superb test phase and enabled Foxstone to refine its acquisition process. A few months later, we made a second transaction in Bernex and everything was in phase: a seller convinced of Foxstone’s seriousness and a successful fund raising in record time… Crowdfunding had become a reality in Geneva.
How would you describe Foxstone?
Foxstone is the brainchild of a team of real estate specialists and IT developers who together have dreamed of making direct investment real estate accessible to as many people as possible.
A word in conclusion?
As a specialist in property sales, I am looking forward to our next transactions and, let’s be crazy, perhaps a payment in virtual currency with even smaller shares.
Many thanks to Patrick Peyrot for answering our questions.
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