From View From The Top, 27 May 2026
Building When Everything Says No
Why The Worst Market In 40 Years May Be The Best Time To Build
The worst property market in 40 years.
That’s what experienced operators are saying. Not commentators. Not analysts. People who have been in the market for decades and are comparing what they’re seeing now to every cycle they’ve lived through. Sentiment is at the floor. Deals aren’t closing. Transactions that would have happened in 48 hours eighteen months ago are taking months — and sometimes not happening at all. Development pipelines are stalling. Capital is scarce or expensive or both. The mood across the market is one of exhaustion.
I want to take that seriously.
And then I want to make an argument that runs directly against it.
THE PARADOX OF THE DOWN MARKET
Here is what I’ve observed across forty years of cycles — building through the collapse of the Soviet Union, through the Asian financial crisis, through 2008, through multiple regional recessions across Central and Eastern Europe. The people who emerge strongest from downturns aren’t the ones who waited for the green light.
They’re the ones who used the red light.
I did that not with blind optimism about when the cycle turns, but deliberately, carefully, with a clear view of what we were building and why the conditions around us — however difficult — we were actually creating the space to build it.
The paradox of the down market is this.
The conditions that make it hardest to operate are the same conditions that make it easiest to build something durable. Exhaustion and opportunity have always coexisted. The question is which one you focus on. I recall in 2001 we were flooded with deals, overstretched, the market fell out of bed. Everything stopped. Equity partners disappeared, and I was left with a big box development in the ground that needed to be delivered in 6. months to Bau Haus a German retailer. We figured it out.
THE TALENT ARGUMENT
Let’s start with people. Because this is where the signal is clearest right now.
Despite with requiters will tell you, the best candidates in the market are available.
Not adequate candidates. Not people who couldn’t find anything better. Experienced, commercial operators — people who have run real assets through real cycles, who understand credit discipline, who know what platform infrastructure actually looks like — who a year ago would have been almost impossible to get in front of.
They’re available now.
This is not a permanent condition. It is a cyclical one. When sentiment turns — and it will — these people will have options. The window for building a team of exceptional operators at a moment when the market is working in your favour as a hirer is narrow.
The companies that used the 2009 to 2012 period to hire aggressively came out of the recovery with teams that were impossible to replicate. The cost of that talent — in salary, in competition, in optionality — was a fraction of what it became when the market turned.
We are in that window now.
At Hilltop we are positioning. Deliberately. Carefully. For the long term. Not because the market is easy. Because this is exactly when the foundation gets laid — and the people you hire in a down market are the ones who want to build something, not just ride a wave.
THE ASSET ARGUMENT
The second argument is about what you can buy — and at what price.
Assets have repriced. Not uniformly. Not everywhere. But across significant parts of the UK residential and commercial market, values have reset from the peaks of 2021 and 2022 in ways that create genuine entry points for disciplined capital.
As we discussed in Issue 25, the replacement cost gap is real and structurally significant. In many markets you can acquire existing assets at prices substantially below what it would cost to build them from scratch. No rational developer breaks ground on a project that costs more to build than to buy — which means new supply isn’t coming. Which means existing owners at reset basis are sitting on something rare.
The asymmetric trade in a down market isn’t in the assets that are falling. It’s in the assets that have already repriced — bought by disciplined capital at sustainable valuations, held through the cycle, positioned for the recovery.
But this requires something most capital doesn’t have in a down market.
The conviction to move when sentiment says don’t.
THE COMPETITION ARGUMENT
The third argument is about who isn’t in the room.
Down markets clear the field. The capital that was chasing yield in the good years — that deployed aggressively into leveraged structures at compressed returns — is now managing the consequences. Redemption gates. Extended timelines. Portfolios under pressure. Attention focused inward.
The intermediaries whose edge was information asymmetry — as we discussed in Issue 25 — are watching that edge erode. The platforms built on model-smoothed valuations are discovering the gap between the model and reality. The fund managers who maximised AUM rather than return are having difficult conversations with their LPs. AI is replacing hoards of analysts, prime office space is no longer necessary.
These big intermediaries need a new playbook. They are not looking for new opportunities right now because right now, truth be told, they are managing existing problems.
For me, that clears space. Not permanently. But meaningfully — for the capital and the operators who have the discipline to move while others are distracted.
The noise is lower in a down market. The competition for the right assets, the right relationships, and the right people is reduced. The operators who understand this use the quiet to build what the noise of a bull market makes impossible.
WHAT BUILDING IN A DOWN MARKET ACTUALLY REQUIRES
This is the part that nobody talks about enough. It’s tough. Let’s start there.
Building in a down market is not about optimism. It is not about contrarianism for its own sake. It is not about calling the bottom or timing the recovery. It requires something more specific and more difficult.
Conviction against sentiment.
The ability to make decisions that run against the prevailing mood — not because you’re ignoring the evidence, but because you’ve done the work to understand what the evidence actually says beyond the headline narrative. Sentiment is not analysis. Exhaustion is not a market view. The operators who build in down markets have separated the noise from the signal.
Structural discipline.
The platform has to be right before the market turns — not after. The compliance framework, the legal architecture, the governance structure, the team. As we discussed in Issue 23, institutional capital doesn’t back deals. It backs infrastructure. And the infrastructure that attracts capital in a recovery is the infrastructure that was built during the downturn — not assembled hastily when the opportunity arrived.
Patient capital.
Building in a down market requires capital that can tolerate the timeline. Not capital looking for a quick return in a market that isn’t offering quick returns. The investors who back platform builds in difficult conditions are making a three to five year commitment — to the operators, to the thesis, and to the market. That alignment between operator and capital is rarer and more valuable than any single transaction.
The long view.
The operators who got this right in 2009 weren’t thinking about 2010. They were thinking about 2015. The decisions made now — who you hire, what you buy, what infrastructure you build — compound over years, not months. The platform you build when everything says no is the platform that carries you when everything says yes.
THREE YEARS FROM NOW
Here is the argument in its simplest form.
Three years from now the market will look different. I don’t know one real estate market that went down that stayed down. Even in Argentina in 91. The markets recover. Not necessarily better in every dimension. But different — recovered in some ways, still adjusting in others, with a new set of winners and a new set of cautionary tales.
The winners will not be those who called the recovery correctly. They will be the operators who stuck around and were already positioned when it came.
Who had the team in place. The assets at the right basis. The infrastructure built to institutional standard. The capital aligned for the long term. Who built when everything said no — and were ready when the market said yes.
HARD LANDING
Every cycle produces the same two groups; the ones who looked at the exhaustion and saw only the exhaustion; and the ones who looked at the exhaustion and saw what was hiding behind it.
The talent. The repriced assets. The cleared field. The quiet that makes building possible. I’ve been through enough cycles to know which group I want to be in.
The hard landing isn’t the down market. The hard landing is arriving at the recovery without having used the downturn.
My advice; build now. Position now. Hire now. The window is open.
It won’t stay open forever.
