If big is beautiful, small keeps the industry diverse and vibrant
As part of our spotlight on navigating structural change, IQ spoke to Jessica Hardman, CEO and Co-founder of Aboria Capital, for her insights on how the industry is changing, and how smaller market participants are critical to ensuring the industry remains vibrant and dynamic. Jessica will also be part of the ‘New Kids on the Block’ panel at the INREV Autumn Conference in Copenhagen on 23 and 24 November.
Aboria Capital is now two years old. What prompted you to set up the venture in the first place and what have been some of the most notable milestones to date?
Towards the end of my previous career, I realised that as a portfolio manager in a larger firm, you can become disconnected from one of the biggest value drivers of operational real estate: net operating income – everything that goes into driving rents and managing operating costs and capex. That has to be managed very closely to deliver the best return, so I set out to create a vertically integrated investment manager.
We set up Aboria at the end of 2024 and began raising capital mid 2025 for our first joint vehicle, which has just closed. We raised £70 million equity for our first portfolio acquisition of around £165 million, a value-add business plan to refurbish older PBSA stock in the strongest UK university cities; that establishes our track record.
We’re currently raising capital to acquire our next value add project, which is progressing well, and we hope to complete by year end. After our second or third deal, we would like to test the market to launch a fund with that strategy.
Is there a single factor which you think gives a business of your size the edge?
There are no layers of people to get through. Investors deal with the same team, and we’re very clear on our buy box and strategy. They either like it or they don't, but it's simple and easy to understand where return is being made. Investors value that consistency – it's a personal touch they only get from a small organisation. We are also close enough to the assets and market to take opportunities quickly or identify risks and expedite a solution.
In a tough capital raising environment, what have you seen by way of a shift in the sources of capital?
Interestingly, in both of those raises we've had a bit more success with private wealth to complement our institutional capital raise.
Family offices are particularly keen to access good products and higher returns. They are willing to make decisions more quickly, and they are experienced investors.
They invest in the big products too, but they really value the personal touch. They want to know about you, your vision and how you execute – and then they want the numbers.
Institutional capital, quite rightly, tend to focus on the numbers first and the backstory second. These investors have to do so much due diligence to get approval to deploy capital that they can’t always move at the speed we need when we’re raising capital to close a deal.
We try to play to our strengths with both. Going to two pools of capital has really helped us, and will hopefully diversify Aboria’s investor base for the future.
What’s your take on the challenges that regulation can pose for the industry, and do you think it’s harder for smaller market participants to navigate these than larger peers?
There's regulation at the investment manager level – being authorised to act as a manager – and then there's regulation at the asset level.
At the investment manager level, I'm all for regulators making it easier for private markets participants to set up businesses like mine – strong, well-governed businesses run by people who have been professionals in the sector for a long time.
At the asset level, I benefit from having built the business with an operating partner, whose team helps us navigate the regulation around running assets. Without that, I don't think I would have done it.
AI and data are hot topics for the real estate industry right now. How are they impacting your business?
It’s remarkable how rapidly AI has changed everything – from asking Claude “how to do” questions to scraping, managing and analysing data. These tools have significantly changed how quickly we can respond to questions about running our business, structuring, and market intel.
AI has also made me rethink who I hire. I need technically minded people who are great at the maths, but they also need to understand real estate – people who can translate between the two. It’s a very valuable skill, and one I would encourage any young talent to think about. It will be essential for the leaders of the future, because you’re trying to match a slow-moving, traditional industry like real estate with a fast-paced tech revolution, and make the right decisions about what is viable. You need smart people who can connect the dots.
Then there’s data. Data in the PBSA sector is very inconsistent, but we’ve worked hard to build a data lake, and from that we’ve created ‘Aboria Lens’ – a tool that pulls together all the information we need: what we're buying, the business plans, rental growth, tenant mix, operating costs and exit timing. There’ll always be a human making the big decisions, but I think these tools will really help us deliver outperformance.
AI isn’t just for the big firms – it absolutely helps the boutiques, too. AI is a great leveller.
What’s your perspective on the ever-increasing shift toward consolidation in the European non-listed real estate industry?
Some of today’s biggest companies were founded by innovative people who stepped out of their comfort zone to pursue a vision they felt no one else was delivering. That has always propelled the industry forward and made it more interesting and investable.
A lot of innovation comes from small businesses, but it’s really tough for them. Large businesses can, of course, help – I work with large businesses that support Aboria because we’re in a niche they will never go into with such depth.
The industry as a whole needs to take responsibility for supporting the grassroots of innovation from people brave enough to step out of the big corporates and do it themselves.
If consolidation removes that part of the industry, we may become a mundane capital allocation sector — effectively ETFs, which we don't want to be. We want investors to be excited by the potential for real estate outperformance – that through stock or manager selection you can beat your benchmark. If we all offer the same product, in the same way, that won't happen.
Capital has choices. If real estate stops innovating, it stops being one of them.
