Leadership

Botan Hourami, Founder.

Botan Hourami has worked across residential and commercial property since 2006 and has been starting and running businesses since his teens.

His route into property was sideways. Covering a reception desk as a favour, he went through the service charge folders, found ways to bring the costs down, and asked whether he could take on the contracts if he delivered the savings. He was told to go for it.

The same period brought the heating fault in Little Venice that nobody had been able to solve. Taking on the jobs others have written off has been the thread ever since.

Botan Hourami on LinkedIn →

Selected professional relationships

Who Botan works with, and how.

Seeasa Limited

Contract role, since 2020

A contract-based business development and delivery relationship with an independent facilities management company. Botan supports business development and the delivery of maintenance, facilities management, cleaning and refurbishment services across residential and commercial property — building relationships with managing agents and commercial landlords, preparing quotations and tenders, coordinating contractors and resolving operational issues. Long-term relationships and sensible cost control rather than one-off sales.

CBGA Robson

Direct client

A longstanding direct commercial property client relationship, and the longest the Group has. It began with a stalled rent arrears assignment in 2008 and has run since through maintenance, refurbishment and project delivery across retail parks, commercial premises and the commercial elements of mixed-use buildings. It remains the source of introductions to others.

Read the full rent recovery story →

In his own words

Sixteen, a milkshake bar, and a hole in a wall.

The whole of it, first hand: the first business, the businesses that worked and the ones that did not, the job that came from staying past midnight to fix a computer, and the partition wall that started a property career. About five minutes to read.

Read my story →

Where property started

Learning it on real schemes.

Early in his property career, straight out of university, Botan worked with a West End property developer and investment business. He joined as a personal assistant and within months was right-hand support on live development activity.

The work was not administrative. He sat in meetings with architects and quantity surveyors, followed financing, worked through snagging, and was involved in residential and commercial sales and lettings. He attended and coordinated meetings with engineers, banks and agents, and at times represented the developer in them.

When apartment sales at one scheme stalled, he led negotiations with a large hotel operator about taking over the building. It was later repossessed during the financial crisis — deal-making at scale, and an early lesson in how quickly markets turn.

In the same period he reviewed potential and existing investments for a portfolio company created for Danish investors: checking purchase prices, rental income, yields and cash flow, reporting to the manager and investors, and looking for practical ways to improve properties and find value in overlooked areas. Early experience in judging whether an acquisition genuinely stacks up.

Architect and quantity surveyor meetings
Financing
Snagging
Residential and commercial sales and lettings

Riverside residential developmentLondon

Residential

Luxury one, two and three bedroom apartments beside the River Thames, with a restaurant at ground level. Around seventy flats.

Large mixed-use redevelopmentMidlands

Office, residential, hotel, leisure and retail

A 200,000 sq ft building taken through to a 350,000 sq ft mixed-use scheme: hotel, offices, retail and apartments.

Phased residential developmentWales

Residential

Contemporary three and four bedroom homes in mid Wales, built out in phases, with more than forty houses completed and further phases in programme.

The schemes are the developer’s, not Botan’s, and are described here without names or figures. He worked on them as part of the developer’s team. They are included to show the scale of building he learned on, not as a personal track record.

Earlier ventures

Businesses built before this one.

Closed chapters, listed for what they taught rather than what they offered.

Until the next generation took it on

A Qatari family office

Ran a family office for a Qatari family, covering everything they owned — from property through to cars. The mandate wound down naturally as the younger generation came of age and took the assets on themselves or sold them.

16 to 21

The Tech Nerds

An IT business built from scratch: virus and trojan removal, network and printer installation, and Windows builds for small businesses — alongside private clients in Belgravia, Notting Hill and Ladbroke Grove. Run alongside a retail job at Dixons and studying, and wound down at 21.

Following a period driving privately

MOBO Chauffeurs

A chauffeur company started after a stint driving for a Saudi royal household. Built and traded successfully before he moved into property.

Early career

Dixons Retail

Started his working life in retail at Dixons and progressed to a senior role through reliability, customer-service ability and dedication. An early grounding in sales, operations and team responsibility.

Various

Retail, hospitality and distribution

Further businesses across retail, hospitality, dry cleaning and distribution — the source of the operational and procurement thinking the Group applies today.

The full history, in the words of the 2012 site →