Lessons from a property legend
When Hall of Fame inductee Frank Charnock set foot on Australian soil in 1961, the nation’s property landscape was “grim”. In his three decades leading Jones Lang Wootton, Charnock professionalised an entire industry.
Charnock says the property market was positively “primeval” when he arrived.
“It shocks people to know that, for instance, there was no property investment market whatever.”
Building and rent controls, imposed during the Second World War, had taken their toll. Superannuation was confined to the public sector, and not one pension fund was empowered to invest in property. Few companies understood the concept of property as an asset class.
Property belonged “in the miscellaneous column along with the office furniture,” Charnock says. “It sounds ridiculous today, but that is just the way it was.”
Charnock entered this primordial property landscape as a seasoned professional. Recruited by Jones Lang Wootton, which later became JLL, Charnock had graduated in estate management and had worked in the British Rail Estate Dept managing urban property, acquisitions and disposals.
At the time, JLW’s Sydney team “amounted to around a dozen people”, half of whom were dedicated to the management of the Anglican Archdiocese estates around Sydney. When he left Australia for London in 1990, JLW had more than 800 people scattered around Australia, and another 800 in Asian offices that had been pioneered entirely out of Australia.
Charnock’s first task in Australia was to project manage Warringah Mall, which was then the largest shopping centre in the country. Together with his long-time colleague John Robinson, Charnock pioneered Australia’s retail leasing system, developing a template that is used by many large shopping centre owners to this day.
Uncovering a data goldmine
But Charnock’s achievements stretch far beyond retail leasing.
A foundation member of the Building Owners’ and Managers Association, which would later evolve into the Property Council of Australia, Charnock applied deep thinking and analysis to pick emerging markets and cycles. He championed cross-border investment, elevated industry standards and unlocked the flow of institutional wealth into property, building prosperity for generations of Australians.
“My first big solo task within JLW was to create a system and staffing for the flood of property management we took on in the early 1960s from earlier project initiation. We even had accounting computerised by 1968,” he explains.
But without credible data and baselines, the property investment market was floundering. Collaborating with his colleagues at BOMA, Charnock set to work with a committee trying to standardise methods of measuring buildings.
“It was one of the bug bears hampering development of the investment market. Hard facts could be difficult to find.”
Charnock brought together architects, planners, agents and developers – “all with different priorities” – to hammer out a standard for net lettable area. “In the end we succeeded, but it was an immense effort.”
This determination to set standards also drove Charnock to establish Australia’s first property research house in 1979. Until then, no one was gathering data “because no one had ever asked for it”.
Run by Australia’s first property PhD, Dr N H Seek, Charnock says the research department gave his staff a sound database, and gave his firm an “edge in an industry held back by inaccurate or absent information”.
Charnock’s willingness to share this data with the industry was at the heart of BOMA’s – and today the Property Council’s – ability to influence.
Building a base of home-grown talent
Arguably Charnock’s greatest achievement was his work to build a base of home-grown industry talent. When he arrived in Australia, property careers weren’t highly esteemed, Charnock says, “so you didn’t get quality people”. Together with his compatriots at BOMA, Frank spent nearly three decades convincing universities to offer degrees in property economics. “It took a long time,” he understates.
“Everything was evolutionary. We were never resting on our oars,” he adds.
Charnock recalls one of his many evening sessions with JLW colleague John Robinson over a bottle of VAT 69 Scotch “when we chewed the fat about the way ahead”.
“Typically, he would say ‘we must aim to be number one’. I would say: ‘Agreed, but what do we mean by that?’. And we would kick this around till we found a clearer picture. I would then go away and develop it into some specific shape which we would then sell to our colleagues.”
Looking back on a lifetime in the property industry, what is Charnock’s advice to up-and-coming property professionals?
“Don’t specialise too soon,” he warns.
If he was starting over, Charnock says he would complement his university qualifications with “three or four years’ experience across a good cross-section of the industry” before choosing a specialisation”.
“You have to take a long view. It may be hard for a time, but things come and go.”
Some things come and go, but Charnock’s legacy endures.