#245 TR Property’s Marcus Phayre-Mudge on manager-investor alignment and the NAV problem

About this episode

Three decades on from joining a graduate scheme during one of the deepest property recessions in living memory, Marcus Phayre-Mudge, fund manager and partner at Thames River Capital, has watched the listed real estate sector cycle through booms, busts, structural change and a creeping crisis of confidence between boards and shareholders. Speaking to Propcast host Andrew Teacher, the long-serving manager of TR Property Investment Trust delivers an unvarnished assessment of governance, manager-investor alignment, communications and the persistent question of scale that continues to challenge the UK market. Phayre-Mudge begins by setting out a framework he still uses to explain the two distinct ways property cycles inflict damage. “There are two diseases for real estate,” he said. “One is a much more short, sharp shock, a bit like being punched in a pub. It hurts like hell, but it’s over quite quickly. That’s when you get a very dramatic change in the cost or availability of capital, which is what we saw in the GFC and more recently in 2021 with the dramatic change in the cost of money.” The second, he warns, is more pernicious. “The other disease, which is actually much more insidi